Business Aviation

Sales in the bizjet sector declined substantially after the 2008 economic downturn and there are good reasons to believe they’ll stay that way for quite some time to come. Quite simply, the supply of business jets—or at least their capacity to fly people places—has exceeded demand. The issue becomes clear when the growth curves of […]

The Global Super Tanker, a converted 747 designed to fight wildfires, has been grounded in California even as fires rage, and its operators say it’s because of “red tape” imposed by the U.S. Forest Service. “We just happen to be the biggest, fastest fire truck in the air,” said Jim Wheeler, CEO of Global SuperTanker […]

Bell Helicopter’s twin-engine 525 Relentless is back in the air after being grounded for about a year following a fatal crash in Texas, the company has announced. Two Bell Helicopter pilots were killed in July 2016 when the 525 crashed during a test flight near the company’s facility in eastern Texas. “Bell Helicopter has worked […]

The Falcon 5X, an all-new widebody business jet by Dassault Aviation, has flown for the first time, the company has announced. The flight lasted for two hours. The Safran Silvercrest engines installed on the test plane are a “preliminary version,” Dassault said. According to the company, “design issues” have delayed the engine’s development four years […]

The U.K. and Norway say they’ll soon lift a 17-month ban on the use of two models of Airbus Super Puma helicopters to service offshore oil operations. The H225LP and AS332L2 helicopters were taken off that kind of duty after a crash in April of 2016 in which the rotor blades separated from a Super […]

Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, a Chinese conglomerate that owns the Volvo and Lotus automobile brands, has agreed to buy the Terrafugia flying-car company, according to a report in the South China Morning Post. The XConomy Boston website also reported on the sale, saying they have “independently been tracking rumors about the acquisition.” Terrafugia CEO Carl […]

A 747 that has been parked at Quonset State Airport in Rhode Island for a couple of years now is being transformed into a replica of Air Force One, according to a local news station. The 747 first flew into the airport in Evergreen livery in June 2015, and has been sitting outside through rain, […]

I’m wondering if we’re seeing a canary in the mineshaft moment here. This week, with the news that Seattle-based Horizon Air is cancelling more than 6 percent of its flights due to lack of pilots, the supposed true-or-not-true pilot shortage seems to be coming to a head. Actually, I think the canary has been dead […]

A good friend of mine who’s an aircraft broker called me this week to ask for my take on what to do about ADS-B installations. He has to have a ready answer for buyers and sellers of legacy airplanes who are asking about this. What was I telling people, he wondered, laboring under the misguided […]

A dispute over noise caused by helicopters flying over the tony Hampton area outside New York City made it all the way to the Supreme Court, but this week, the judges said they won’t hear the case. The Town of East Hampton had petitioned the court last November, after a federal appeals court said the […]