Aviation News

Several hundred pieces of software written by NASA engineers for air and spacecraft design, business optimization, systems interaction and biomedical applications have been released by the agency for free public use. The software is being made available through the NASA Technology Transfer Program (motto, “Bringing NASA Technology Down to Earth”). The available codes are listed […]

The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), the EU equivalent of the US FAA, published today long-awaited rules broadening the permitted use of single-engine turbine (SET) aircraft in commercial operations. Previously, commercial operators, both charter and cargo, were not permitted to operate any single-engine aircraft at night or in instrument meteorological conditions. Today’s rule lifts those […]

Sales of aircraft avionics and related equipment were down for a second year in a row, says the Aircraft Electronics Association (AEA) in their annual market report. Sales totaled $2.26 billion in 2016, down 6.4% from $2.42 billion the prior year. The market for forward-fit avionics—sales of equipment destined for newly manufactured aircraft—slid 9.4%, fairing […]

The pilot of a drone that hit a building, then fell into a crowd watching a parade and hit a 25-year-old woman, knocking her unconscious, has been sentenced to 30 days in jail by a Seattle municipal court. Paul Skinner, 38, of Washington, who owns an aerial photography company, was convicted of reckless endangerment, which […]

Australia’s biggest airshow, the Australian International Airshow and Aerospace & Defence Exposition, runs all this week at Avalon Airport, with about 350 civil and military aircraft on display and nearly 700 exhibitors. The event operates as a trade show Tuesday through Thursday and opens to the public Friday through Sunday, with a range of airshow […]

It’s getting so a poor blogger can’t catch a breath around here. No sooner do I write about NASA considering sending the first Orion mission around the moon than along comes Elon Musk to say, never mind, we’re going next year. While fellow billionaire Richard Branson struggles to shoot a few tourists on a crummy […]

SpaceX will send two people on a trip around the Moon next year in a Falcon Heavy rocket, the company announced on Monday. The two private citizens, whose names have not yet been released, have already paid “a significant deposit,” SpaceX said. “Like the Apollo astronauts before them, these individuals will travel into space carrying […]

Here’s an aerospace story that hasn’t generated much notice. The Trump White House is apparently pushing NASA to consider making the first flight of the new Orion manned space system a circumlunar flight, rather than an unmanned test mission. That has a nice, if somewhat melancholy, resonance to it. Fifty years after the fact, we […]

NASA’s Quiet Supersonic Technology (QueSST) preliminary design model is entering an eight-week testing phase at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, the agency reports. The Glenn Research Center wind tunnel will simulate speeds from Mach 0.3 to Mach 1.6 to ensure smooth airflow into the engine during all phases of flight and to confirm […]

Pilots continue to report increasing numbers of suspected in-flight sightings of small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS) to air traffic control, says data released Thursday by the FAA. Pilots reported 1,274 sightings of sUAS in areas where those systems are not authorized to operate for the February 2016 through September 2016 reporting period. Those figures are […]