Aviation News

SpaceX took a giant leap to the top of NASA’s most trusted contractors’ list on Friday when it was tagged to build the next lunar lander for the agency’s Artemis program. The company, led by tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, won the $2.9 billion contract by beating out Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin partnership and defense contractor […]

The FAA now says pilots should do their own preflight self-briefing on the internet before flying and use Flight Service “in a consultative capacity” if they run into trouble. The agency has issued an advisory circular (AC) that essentially codifies what most pilots have been doing for a decade or more. “The FAA considers that […]

A TBM Avenger from the Valiant Air Command performing at the Cocoa Beach Air Show in Florida put on a show for some people on the beach on Saturday when the pilot set it down in the surf for a textbook ditching. Audio in the accompanying video features the staccato notes of a dying radial […]

This week, AVweb’s news roundup uncovered reports on a new set of alternator coupling tools, a logbook scanning network and a contract for online pilot training. Approach Aviation has introduced a set of tools designed for installing, removing and testing alternator drive couplings found on many Continental Aerospace piston engines. The toolkit includes a zinc-coated […]

King Schools introduced a new free video course on aircraft marshalling at the annual Sun ‘n Fun Aerospace Expo on Friday. The online course, titled Understanding Aircraft Marshalling, covers topics including marshalling signals used on arrival, shutdown, startup and departure along with specialty and seldom-used signals. In addition, it goes over what signals to give […]

ATP Flight School is expected to take delivery of 25 Piper Archer TX training aircraft this year, according to an announcement from Piper on Thursday. The new Archers are part of a 100-aircraft order placed by ATP in 2018. The deal, which is valued at $37 million, is the second 100-aircraft order Piper has gotten […]

The NTSB has released its final report on the fatal crash of the Collings Foundation’s B-17 Nine-O-Nine and the board’s takeaway is no surprise to anyone who has been following the story. While the primary cause of the accident is reported as “the pilot’s failure to properly manage the airplane’s configuration and airspeed after he […]

Engine manufacturer Williams International announced on Wednesday that it has completed a successful flight test using 100 percent sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) in its FJ44-4 engine. The test flight lasted 3.5 hours with a maximum cruising altitude of FL450. It was conducted out of Williams’ flight operations center in Pontiac, Michigan, using the company’s experimental […]

The students of the Lakeland Aero Club are building a Patriot Aircraft PA-18R Recruit Cub this week at the Sun ‘n Fun Aerospace Expo at Florida’s Lakeland Linder International Airport (KLAL). The club, whose members are between the ages of 14 and 24, is hoping to complete the fuselage, wings and 118-HP O-200 powerplant by […]

Boeing is bullish on prospects for support for the aviation industry from the financial sector. “Despite the unprecedented impacts of Covid-19 on the global aerospace industry,” said Tim Myers, president of Boeing Capital Corporation, “there generally continues to be liquidity in the market for our customers, and we expect it to further improve as travel […]