Aviation News

Pilot Vlado Lenoch, 64, of Illinois, and his passenger, Bethany Root, 34, of Kansas, died about 10:30 Sunday morning when the P-51 Mustang “Baby Duck” they were flying crashed in Kansas, news outlets have reported. Lenoch had flown the classic airplane on Saturday night at the Atchison airport, in an airshow that was held as […]

The Global Super Tanker, a converted 747 designed to fight wildfires, has been grounded in California even as fires rage, and its operators say it’s because of “red tape” imposed by the U.S. Forest Service. “We just happen to be the biggest, fastest fire truck in the air,” said Jim Wheeler, CEO of Global SuperTanker […]

Bell Helicopter’s twin-engine 525 Relentless is back in the air after being grounded for about a year following a fatal crash in Texas, the company has announced. Two Bell Helicopter pilots were killed in July 2016 when the 525 crashed during a test flight near the company’s facility in eastern Texas. “Bell Helicopter has worked […]

The Falcon 5X, an all-new widebody business jet by Dassault Aviation, has flown for the first time, the company has announced. The flight lasted for two hours. The Safran Silvercrest engines installed on the test plane are a “preliminary version,” Dassault said. According to the company, “design issues” have delayed the engine’s development four years […]

As the FAA sorts out the mess created when its drone registration rule was struck down by the courts, it’s already thinking about taking the registration requirement to the next level and requiring operators to transmit their registration information. The drone website wetalkuav.com reported that the first meeting of the FAA’s UAS Identification and Tracking […]

The U.K. and Norway say they’ll soon lift a 17-month ban on the use of two models of Airbus Super Puma helicopters to service offshore oil operations. The H225LP and AS332L2 helicopters were taken off that kind of duty after a crash in April of 2016 in which the rotor blades separated from a Super […]

Some owners of drones who registered their aircraft with the FAA will be eligible for a refund of their $5 registration fee and deletion of their data, says the agency. Starting just before Christmas 2015, the FAA started requiring operators of unmanned aerial systems weighing more than 0.55 pounds (one quarter of a kilogram) to […]

Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, a Chinese conglomerate that owns the Volvo and Lotus automobile brands, has agreed to buy the Terrafugia flying-car company, according to a report in the South China Morning Post. The XConomy Boston website also reported on the sale, saying they have “independently been tracking rumors about the acquisition.” Terrafugia CEO Carl […]

A 747 that has been parked at Quonset State Airport in Rhode Island for a couple of years now is being transformed into a replica of Air Force One, according to a local news station. The 747 first flew into the airport in Evergreen livery in June 2015, and has been sitting outside through rain, […]

I’m wondering if we’re seeing a canary in the mineshaft moment here. This week, with the news that Seattle-based Horizon Air is cancelling more than 6 percent of its flights due to lack of pilots, the supposed true-or-not-true pilot shortage seems to be coming to a head. Actually, I think the canary has been dead […]