Business Aviation

The European Business Aviation Convention & Exhibition (EBACE) kicked off this week with 23 aircraft heading there with some “sustainable alternative jet fuel” or SAJF in their tanks. SAJF is “derived from renewable feedstocks,” which is how it earns the “sustainable” descriptor. SAJF is an important component of the bizjet industry’s desire to reduce its […]

Four Americans and their Canadian pilot were killed in the crash of a Cherokee Six on the shore of Roatan Island in Honduras Saturday. The U.S. citizens, who have been described as tourists in various media reports, have not been identified but the pilot was Patrick Forseth, a British Columbia resident who sometimes went by […]

Although originally planned for 2028, NASA says it can accelerate the next Moon mission to 2024 and it wants more money to do it. NASA and the White House have requested a $1.6 billion budget amendment to fly the so-called Artemis mission four years sooner than planned. The project is named after the Greek goddess […]

SpaceX head Elon Musk tweeted out a photo of 60 Starlink satellites packed into the nose of a Falcon rocket. SpaceX is slated to launch the rocket Wednesday, but the photo previews Musk’s desire to provide internet access around the world where ground-based infrastructure is impossible to too expensive. The 60 Starlink satellites are the […]

In the “git ‘er done” spirit of the heartland, a South Dakota county has granted an aerial application company the right to land and take off on county roads to fertilize local fields. Brookings County has been drenched by storms in the critical first few weeks of the growing season and Isaac Wilde, of Wilde […]

I was sitting in a traffic jam Friday and getting ever more steamed because I was already 20 minutes late. Adding to my dismay was that the local NPR station was running its spring fundraising drive and interrupting the programming every five minutes. Piling on top of that and irritating me further is that they […]

Test pilots on the Boeing 737 MAX weren’t provided key details on how the MCAS stability system functioned and apparently weren’t aware of its aggressive trim capability. The Wall Street Journal reports that MAX flight test pilots were also unaware that MCAS relied on data from a single angle-of-attack sensor. The report follows a revelation […]

Bombardier has announced that it will consolidate its aerospace assets into a single business unit under the heading Bombardier Aviation. As part of the consolidation, Bombardier will be looking to sell its Belfast and Morocco aerostructures businesses. The company says the move will allow it to better focus on its Global, Challenger, Learjet and CRJ […]

When Boeing finally digs itself out of the self-inflicted PR disaster of the 737 MAX story—if it ever does—I wonder how it will be graded on handling the crisis. I wonder, but I’m kinda disposed to think it will become a textbook case of how not to behave in the searing glare of catastrophic bad […]

Southwest Airlines, Boeing’s biggest customer for the troubled 737 MAX, said this week that the airplane maker’s documentation incorrectly claimed that its aircraft had operable angle-of-attack disagree warning lights. But Boeing informed Southwest that the AoA function was actually inoperative only after the Lion Air crash in Indonesia last October. Even as Boeing finishes software […]