Interesting Airplanes

An unusual teardrop-shaped aircraft with a pusher prop has been undergoing taxi tests at California Logistics Airport near Victorville, California, leading to speculation the Celera 500L is ready for its first flight. The plane has been under secret development for about a decade and is said to be an “extremely low drag” design that will […]

An apparently well-funded Massachusetts startup says it will develop a “flying car” hexacopter powered by a hydrogen fuel cell that will carry five people 400 miles. Alaka’i’s Skai says it picked fuel cells as an energy source because they’re much more energy dense and long-lasting than any batteries developed so far. The effort is backed […]

Reuters is reporting that Stratolaunch Systems, the rocket launch company founded by the late Paul Allen, will be closed after unsuccessful efforts to sell it. Allen, who died at 65 last October, teamed up with Scaled Composites founder Burt Rutan to create the launch system, which was to use a massive six-engine aircraft to carry […]

Diamond Aircraft Industries is partnering with Russia’s Rostec to develop a low-cost, 19-seat, diesel-powered, composite utility aircraft designed to service communities in vast reaches of the country that have no road or rail links. The aircraft will be designed to replace the ancient An-2 biplanes and L-410 turboprops that ply these obscure routes now. “An-2 […]

It’s been a few years since there was a first flight of a clean sheet airliner design but it seems likely there will be two by the end of the month. Airbus announced the first flight of its A350 will be June 14 at 10 a.m. in Toulouse, France. Assuming that goes well, the A350 […]

Embraer has released a splashy new promotional video featuring its business jet spokesman, actor Jackie Chan. The video, described by Embraer as a “cinematic short film,” has the production values of a Hollywood trailer and packs a plot, special effects and generous views of the cabin into a six-minute package aimed at getting across the […]

The new owners of the rights to the former Sino Swearingen SJ30 business jet have been offered an “aggressive” incentive package to build the aircraft in Cedar City, Utah. The company is now called SyberJet. The package would be worth about $10 million in property tax relief for an enterprise touted to create 1,200 aerospace […]

Embraer will fly its prototype Legacy 500 midsize business jet to the European Business Aviation Convention and Exhibition (EBACE) in Geneva next week in the first public showing of the aircraft. Corporate Jet Investor is reporting that Embraer will also bring along its 2013 model Lineage 1000. “EBACE, Europe’s premier business aviation gathering, is an […]

This article originally appeared in Kitplanes, April 2008. Those of you who attended that big airshow in the state of Wisconsin a year ago might have noticed a curious juxtaposition. If you had started a soft-serve ice cream before dropping by the Van’s Aircraft booth to see the RV-12 prototype, you probably would not be […]

This article originally appeared in Kitplanes, Dec. 2007. Launching from the softly rippling surface of Lake Seminole in St. Petersburg, Fla., felt slightly like what a stone must feel like after a youngster’s sidearm sling sends it skipping across the water. There’s a little bounce, a slight skip, then another. But, unlike the rock, the […]