Aviation News

Pilots who just can’t get enough of aviation have two new media options to choose from this week. AARP Studios has launched a new video series on YouTube called “Badass Pilot,” an original unscripted series that features Art Nalls, age 65. Nalls, a retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel, owns a British Sea Harrier fighter jet, […]

Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser successfully completed a drop and glide test flight from 12,300 feet to Runway 22L at Edwards Air Force Base last week. “The Dream Chaser flight test demonstrated excellent performance of the spacecraft’s aerodynamic design and the data shows that we are firmly on the path for safe, reliable orbital flight,” said […]

Two very different “flying-car” projects have reported major moves forward this week. Terrafugia, which has been working to certify a “roadable aircraft” with folding wings under the LSA rules, confirmedon Monday that it has become a fully owned subsidiary of Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, a Chinese conglomerate that also owns Volvo and focuses on the […]

The U.S. Forest Service clearly doesn’t want to use the so-called “super tanker” firefighting aircraft that have emerged in the last decade but the Government Accountability Office says it has to come up with better reasons for barring them from the battle. Last May, the Forest Service limited the size of retardant tanks on aircraft […]

Ohio-based Workhorse Group, which builds hybrid electric trucks for UPS, FedEx and others, thinks it’s time to rethink the design characteristics of the traditional helicopter. The first stab at it is the SureFly VTOL aircraft. It attracted huge attention at the Innovations Center at AirVenture Oshkosh this past summer. Aviation Consumer Editor Larry Anglisano took […]

Uber has signed a deal with NASA to develop software for the air taxi it plans to have in service within five years. At a web conference in Lisbon on Wednesday, Uber’s Jeff Holden said the company is teaming with NASA to develop a range of technologies designed to track and de-conflict its human-carrying quadcopters […]

Cellphone video shot by the boaters who were first on the scene at retired Major League Baseball pitcher Roy Halladay’s plane crash showed him doing a low-level steep turn and flying just above the Gulf of Mexico off Florida before he crashed. The video, obtained by TMZ, accompanied a story in which other witnesses said […]

There are probably few people who know more about aviation safety than former AOPA Safety Foundation President Bruce Landsberg so it would seem to be a no-brainer that he cap his influential and important career by becoming the newest member of the NTSB. But it’s a political appointment and the politics of aviation safety are […]

Electric powerplants and autonomous systems continue to make progress, with reports this week of first flights and new designs. In China, the two-seat RX1E-A, an advanced version of the RX1E, designed by Shenyang Aerospace University, flew for the first time this week and proved it can now fly for up to two hours on a […]

Two men who died in the crash of a Czech-built light-sport aircraft in Rhoadesville, Virginia, in May 2016 had deployed a parachute recovery system, but it failed when the single front attachment point detached, according to a recent NTSB report. According to the NTSB, the pilot had recently purchased the Jihlavan KP 5 ASA (Skyleader […]