Aviation News

Bell Helicopter demonstrated its unmanned Hybrid Drive Train Research Aircraft (HYDRA) at the first Tech Demo edition of the Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Center of Excellence in Alma, Quebec, this week. According to the company, HYDRA uses distributed propulsion technology and a circular wing to “sustain wing-borne flight at reduced power consumption, while increasing its […]

The CAFE Foundation, which works to promote new aircraft technologies, held its 12th Electric Aircraft Symposium in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, in July, and now all 19 of the speakers’ presentations have been posted online. The forums explore the future of electric-powered aviation and opportunities in the sector. The speakers include representatives from Aurora Flight Sciences, Uber […]

Hybrid Air Freighters, based in Paris, and Columbia Helicopters, in Oregon, have agreed to team up to operate a fleet of 12 airships to be built by Lockheed Martin. In a joint news release issued earlier this month, the companies said the airships will provide “high performance and innovative logistical services” for the oil and […]

A small company based in France has created a two-place hot-air balloon designed to be certified under U.S. S-LSA regulations, with production expected to begin early next year. “The system is available for sale as an experimental already,” designer and CEO Leandro Corradini told AVweb in an email. “I applied the ASTM standard since the […]

Yet another eVTOL company has announced it is in flight trials with the intention of upending the urban transportation market and Astro Aerospace, of Dallas, isn’t shy about the Jetson analogies. Not only is the company named after the 1960s cartoon family of the future’s dog, its prototype autonomous passenger carrying drone is called Elroy […]

From the curious headline file: Crash Pilot Had Certificate Revoked. We published that last week atop a story describing the fatal crash of a Cessna 335 in which it was revealed that the owner/pilot had apparently been flying without a pilot certificate for 21 years, having lost it by revocation. A curious headline generated an […]

JetBlue announced that its newest aircraft, an Airbus A321 it received on Wednesday, will make its first flights using a sustainable jet fuel blend. According to the company, the acceptance flight and JetBlue’s ferry flight, which is scheduled for September 20, will be the airline’s first flights to use sustainable (also called renewable) biofuel. JetBlue […]

The last piece of the FAA’s Low Altitude Authorization and Notification Capability (LAANC) system, which allows “near real-time processing of airspace authorizations” for drone operators, went live last week, according to a statement made by FAA Acting Administrator Dan Elwell. LAANC was rolled out incrementally by region, beginning with the south central U.S. at the […]

SpaceX has announced that Japanese fashion entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa has purchased a flight around the moon on the company’s still-conceptual Big Falcon Rocket (BFR). Maezawa, who is also an avid art collector, says he will be offering six to eight artists free seats for the flight in the hope that they will be inspired to […]