Business Aviation

The great test to unravel the globalized nature of modern economies was going to happen sooner or later. The just-announced U.S. tariff against Bombardier’s CSeries airliner may not be the first shot nor even the biggest, but it’s illustrative of how difficult placing U.S. trade interests above all else will be. The modern aerospace industry […]

Dubai took another step toward providing autonomous flying taxi service, when an unmanned Volocopter took off and flew a demo flight above the city on Monday. It was the “first-ever public flight of an autonomous urban air taxi,” according to Volocopter. “This establishes the feasibility and safety of airborne taxis as a means of public […]

Tecnam and Cape Air said this week they have agreed on a delivery schedule for the 11-seat twin commuter that was designed to replace the Cessna 402s in Cape Air’s fleet. Cape Air has agreed to buy 100 of the P2012 Traveller airplanes, and Tecnam now says the first 20 will start deliveries in January […]

Airbus has flown a test aircraft for the first time with its new transonic laminar wing that it hopes will reduce wing friction by up to 50 percent. The gain in aerodynamic efficiency would lower carbon-dioxide emissions by 5 percent, the company said. The Flight Lab test aircraft, an A340, flew for about three and […]

Boeing is offering $2 million in prize money to encourage innovators to create a “safe and easy-to-use personal flying device,” the company announced on Tuesday. The two-year competition, called “GoFly,” is open to teams from around the world. Boeing hopes the project will leverage recent advances in propulsion, energy, lightweight materials, and control and stability […]

We don’t often find cause to clap for the meddling regulatory overreach of the FAA, but the agency won one this week that I, for one, am personally cheering. U.S. District Judge William G. Young said the city of Newton, Massachusetts (near Boston) can’t require drone operators to register their machines with the city, nor […]

Two brothers in Seattle, working as Egan Airships, have built a drone that combines features from both fixed-wing aircraft and blimps to create an aircraft that can hover, take off and land vertically, and fly at up to 40 mph. The 28-foot-long aircraft weighs less than 55 pounds and uses a patented streamlined envelope design, […]

I got an email this week from a reader on the cusp of making a small fleet purchase for a few flight schools. I was asked for an opinion on the various choices in the training market. The more you think about this, the more difficult the decision actually is. There’s simply no perfect airplane […]

Spike Aerospace, one of a handful of companies working to bring back supersonic civilian flight, said on Wednesday they will fly their first SX-1.2 demonstrator aircraft by the end of this month. The scaled, proof-of-concept unmanned aircraft will help validate the aerodynamics of the planned S-512 supersonic jet, the company said. “We’re very excited to […]

Anyone who knows anything about aviation also knows at least two things about regulations: They’re written in blood and despite the belief that the FAA devises rules on a whim, the so-called tombstone mentality lives on. The bodies come before the rules, usually, and sometimes it takes a while. But unless we’re reminded of it […]