Aviation News

This week, AVweb’s news roundup found reports on new products from an engine and avionics upgrade provider, a distribution partnership for an engine company and a fresh management platform for an aviation group. General aviation engine and avionics upgrade company Air Plains Services has announced that its newly certified Lycoming Electronic Ignition System for its […]

The FAA has issued a new airworthiness directive (AD) for certain Aspen Avionics Evolution flight display systems due to an “automatic reset occurring when the display internal monitor detects a potential fault, causing intermittent loss of airspeed, attitude, and altitude information during flight.” The AD restricts operation with these systems to day VFR flight. The […]

The Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) and representatives from Oshkosh, Wisconsin’s Wittman Regional Airport (OSH) met with the FAA this week for a safety risk management panel (SRM) to discuss establishing turf operations at OSH. According to EAA, key stakeholders reviewed more than 40 areas in question during the SRM panel. The agency determined there was […]

Boom Supersonic announced on Thursday that it has entered into an agreement with Rolls-Royce to explore using a Rolls-Royce propulsion system for Boom’s Overture supersonic commercial passenger aircraft. Teams from the companies will be collaborating on engine-airframe matching activities including investigating whether an existing engine system can be adapted for supersonic flight. The base price […]

Autonomous aerial vehicle (AAV) technology company EHang has announced plans to build a new production facility at its site in Yunfu City in Guangdong, China. The AAV production center will also include an air mobility solutions R&D facility and a training center for “operations and technical talents.” According to the company, it is investing RMB […]

Gulfstream Aerospace announced on Tuesday that the G700 business jet is making progress on its flight test program, having now logged more than 100 test flights. In addition to completing flutter testing, the test flights took the aircraft beyond its typical maximum operating speed and cruise altitude, reaching Mach 0.99 and 54,000 feet. The model […]

As part of an announcement addressing a $2.4 billion second-quarter (Q2) net loss, Boeing has confirmed that it plans to end production of its iconic 747 jet in 2022. The company also intends to reduce the combined 777/777X production rate to two per month along with dropping 787 production to six per month for 2021, […]

No longer constrained to tethered flight, Airbus’s VSR700 has completed its first free flight. According to the company, the VSR few for 10 minutes at the drone center near Aix-en-Provence in the south of France. We had previously reported on the VSR’s first tethered flights last November.  To enable safe free flight, Airbus enabled active […]

The International Air Transport Association’s latest forecast for global travel has slipped the “break even” point by a year, predicting that airline travel will not rise to meet pre-COVID-19 levels until 2024 and that the total falloff in 2020 will be deeper than originally expected. “The recovery in short haul travel is still expected to […]

Many homebuilt aircraft are rightly considered hot rods, with small airframes and big engines. While Van’s Aircraft, by far the volume leader in kits sold today, has not changed the size of its RV-14 two-seat kitbuilt, it has spec’d a new version of Lycoming’s IO-390 engine to give it more performance. Called the IO-390-EXP119, the […]