Aviation News

As expected, Ingenuity, the diminutive helicopter the Perseverance rover flew to Mars, completed a successful test flight from the Jezero Crater at 12:31 a.m. EDT and achieved an altitude of about 10 feet before touching down successfully 40 seconds later. Data confirming the flight was received by NASA at 6:15 a.m. “Ingenuity has performed its […]

The FAA is throwing the book, and a proposed $1.56 million fine, at a small town whose airport is a lot bigger and more expensive to maintain than its traffic warrants. The agency announced via a news release that it was citing Anniston, Alabama, for a laundry list of violations from broken pavement to missing […]

Airbus is floating a new idea for hydrogen that it says could make electric aircraft much more efficient and therefore more viable. The company is looking at ways to use liquid hydrogen to cool superconducting components on the aircraft to greatly improve their ability to make power. “With the ASCEND demonstrator, we’ll pave the way […]

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 […]