Aviation News

Virgin Galactic has successfully tested its feather re-entry system in flight for the first time, the company said this week. The system, which is designed to enable VSS Unity to safely return to Earth after carrying tourists to the edge of space, reconfigures the vehicle by folding up its twin tail booms. The structure acts […]

Officials from the FAA visited Cirrus Aircraft in Duluth, Minnesota, on Tuesday to award the company with a production certificate for the Cirrus jet. The certification means that FAA staffers no longer need to check each individual jet before delivery, which will help the company to ramp up its production. “We are just reaching one […]

Flight Design has been the leader in sales of light sport aircraft since the category launched in 2004, but data recently compiled for sales through 2016 shows that CubCrafters has taken over the lead spot, with a total of 382 aircraft delivered, compared to Flight Design’s total of 378. Third place goes to the Cessna […]

Bell Helicopter’s new tilt-rotor design, the V-280 Valor, is about 95 percent complete and will likely fly for the first time in September, the company says. Bell displayed a full-size mock-up of the V-280 last week at the Army Aviation Mission Solutions Summit in Nashville, Tennessee. The V-280 is designed to fly at speeds up […]

Companies like Boeing, Cessna, Piper, Garmin and a handful of others rarely complain openly about the cost and delays of FAA certification. One reason is that through decades of experience, they understand the process and have in-house staff who know how the game has to be played. And they still spend a lot of money […]

Nobody who attended Uber’s Elevate conference this week — or watched the live online stream — would come away thinking it’s going to be easy to create autonomous flying taxis, but there’s a good chance you’d be convinced it’s doable. If nothing else, the corporate names were impressive — this wasn’t just enthusiasts and academics […]

Uber drew lots of attention this week with their three-day Elevate conference about how to create an urban network of flying taxis by 2020, but as ambitious as their goals are, John Langford, the CEO of Aurora Flight Sciences, says they are “doable.” The vision won’t come to pass, though, he told AVwebin an interview […]

John Langford, CEO of Aurora Flight Sciences, attended Uber’s Elevate Summit in Dallas, and offers his take on what it will take to make urban electric VTOL transport a reality. Duration: 14:03 File Size: download here

The whole idea of flying cars has come to symbolize the imagined future that never arrives, but Uber’s Elevate Summit on Tuesday made clear that aviation’s serious players are serious about this technology, and it’s coming soon, and it’s going to be game-changing. “This industry is going to be successful faster than anyone thinks … […]

Beechcraft’s King Air twin turboprop has long been popular, with more than 3,000 built since the 1960s, but that doesn’t make it invulnerable to market forces — and a weak international market has driven down deliveries in the first quarter of this year to just 12, compared to 26 in the same period last year, […]