Interesting Airplanes

The Canadian government has grounded a Russian cargo aircraft after the plane delivered a load of COVID-19 tests—for the Canadian government. The Volga Dnepr An-124, now the largest civilian cargo plane in operation, arrived at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport on Feb. 27 on one of a series of charter flights for the Canadian government’s pandemic […]

Ukraine says it wants to rebuild the AN-225 destroyed during fighting at Gostomel Airport in late February. “The biggest plane in the world ‘Mriya’ (The Dream) was destroyed by Russian occupants on an airfield near Kyiv,” Ukraine’s official Twitter site said. “We will rebuild the plane. We will fulfill our dream of a strong, free, […]

Some satellite imagery sleuthing by an expert in the field suggests there might be something, maybe even quite a lot, left of the AN-225 Mriya cargo aircraft reportedly destroyed in Ukraine last week. Paul Byrne, an associate professor of Earth and Planetary Science at Washington University in St. Louis, tweeted some recent satellite pictures of the […]

Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba confirmed on Feb. 27 the world’s largest cargo aircraft, the AN-225 Mriya, was destroyed during a Russian attack on Gostomel/Antonov Airport in northern Ukraine on Feb. 24. There was an earlier report that the plane was safe on the ground in Georgia but Kuleba’s statement appears to refute […]

Textron rolled out the first production Cessna SkyCourier on Thursday and the clean-sheet turboprop twin package freighter will go to launch customer FedEx. The aircraft is Cessna’s first new twin in decades and marks an aggressive play for dominance in the regional freight market. “The SkyCourier brings an impressive combination of cabin flexibility, payload capability, […]

Boeing has sunk another half-billion dollars into Wisk Aero, its partner in the urban mobility sector, to fund its flight test and certification program. Wisk is a collaboration of Boeing and Kitty Hawk, and the Cora electric aircraft is now in its sixth iteration and flying regularly. It has 12 wing-mounted horizontally oriented rotors to […]

Boom Supersonic has picked Piedmont Triad International Airport in Greensboro, North Carolina, as the site for the “superfactory” that will build its Overture supersonic airliner. The company announced last week that the 400,000-square-foot facility will be built on a 65-acre site at the airport, which is also home to Honda Aircraft. Boom founder Blake Scholl […]

A paraplegic Pennsylvania pilot has become the first to earn a type rating in a Cirrus SF50 Vision Jet. Clayton Smeltz lost the use of his legs when he was just 16 months old in a vehicle accident and earned his private certificate in a Cherokee 10 years ago. On Jan. 4, he got typed […]

After a few tough years of quality control issues, a disastrous two-year grounding of its foundation aircraft and intense regulatory scrutiny, Boeing says it’s doing a top-to-bottom overhaul of its design, engineering and manufacturing systems as it gears up to build its next clean-sheet airplane. The company recently told Reuters it plans to plunge the […]

As the U.S.’s traditional adversaries flex their territorial muscles, there are more public announcements about new secret programs and the analysts at Forbes believe a drone-carrying B-21 stealthbomber is a possibility. At a recent defense forum, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall fessed up that two new development programs will show up in the next budget, […]