Aviation News

In a move sure to cause tension between Boeing and arguably its best customer in the U.S., the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association filed suit against the planemaker today, alleging that Boeing misled the union when it claimed the 737 MAX flew just like its predecessor aircraft. Southwest flies a fleet made up exclusively of Boeing […]

The U.K. Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has announced that it is wrapping up Operation Matterhorn, the program it put in place to return more than 140,000 people to the country after they were stranded by the liquidation of tourism company Thomas Cook on Sept. 23. According to the CAA, the operation involved 150 aircraft from […]

Together the more than 375 V-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft in service have logged in excess of 500,000 flight hours, according to maker Bell Boeing. The V-22 was begun in 1983, first flew in 1989, and was finally entered into service with the U.S. Marine Corp in 2007 as the MV-22B. The U.S. Air Force got […]

There are lots of ways for customers to rank airlines but few are as rapid and unsparing as social media. Just ask Spirit Airlines, which was noted as having nearly 75 percent of its mentions on Twitter containing “negative” sentiment, compared to Southwest, which saw the same percentage of positive comments. These conclusions are the […]

The FAA has launched an investigation into whether a Las Vegas helicopter charter company violated safety regulations by dropping $10,000 in cash on a soccer field during halftime promotion for the local pro team. The Skyline Helicopter Tours aircraft circled the field in the packed stadium a half-dozen times before dropping the cash over 200 […]

The FAA has formally requested the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to address the issue of declining manual flight skills among airline pilots. In a brief submitted to ICAO, the agency says pilots have become too dependent on aircraft systems and either haven’t adequately learned or have not maintained their ability to manually control their […]

Kitty Hawk’s latest entry into the incipient urban mobility market is missing something important and it might be its biggest selling point. The new Heaviside (named for Oliver Heaviside, a controversial early 20th century physicist and electrical engineer) is virtually silent in flight with a noise level of about 38 decibels at 1,500 feet. Helicopters […]

The entire fleet of Boeing 737NG aircraft must be checked for potentially serious structural cracks but the inspections are easy to accomplish and will only add an hour to routine maintenance, unless cracks are found. As we reported last week, Boeing found cracks in the “pickle fork” assembly on a relatively low-time NG that it […]

Textron subsidiary Bell introduced the new Bell 360 Invictus military rotorcraft as its entry for the U.S. Army’s Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) Competitive Prototype program this week. The aircraft will feature lift-sharing wings to reduce rotor lift demand in forward flight, a fly-by-wire flight control system, supplemental power unit, and articulated main rotor with […]

AVweb’s weekly news roundup uncovered reports on a new position for former Flying magazine editor-in-chief Stephen Pope, a trip to the SAFE Symposium for an engineered woven fabrics company, a line of resistance welding supplies and a company offering precision displacement sensors and systems. Former Flying magazine editor-in-chief Stephen Pope has accepted a position with […]