Aviation News

In its weekly perusal of developments in aviation, AVweb’s staff turned up news of an expansion of SocialFlight, insurance benefits for customers of Crosswind Concepts, the annual convention of the Silver Wings Fraternity and certification of Piper’s M-Class airplanes in China. SocialFlight, a web and mobile app for finding events and interesting places to fly, […]

For the past five years, Chris Malloy and his company Malloy Aeronautics have been developing the hoverbike-originally resembling a flying motorcycle with two horizontal fans. A four-fan, 1/3 scale prototype UAV-complete with a robot rider (named Buster)-is now flying and copies of what is called Drone 3 are available for those who want to invest […]

For the second time in one week, a contretemps over reclining an airline seat led to a flight diverting and landing short of its destination. An American Airlines flight bound from Miami to Paris landed in Boston Wednesday night after Parisian Edmund Alexandre, variously reported as 60 and 61, became upset when the passenger in […]

Just a year and a half after first flight of the prototype SAM aircraft, President Thierry Zibi has put the company up for sale. Why, after so much work – design, fixturing, successful flight test, certification and orders – would that be a good time to sell the company? Zibi says, “I came to the […]

AVweb’s weekly review of developments in aviation revealed news that Cessna delivered its 10,000th single-engine airplane from its Independence, Kansas, facility, Bell Helicopter broke ground on a new manufacturing facility, Cutter Aviation received a safety award, and the FAA authorized transition training in Bearhawk amateur-built aircraft. Textron Aviation Inc. announced that Cessna Aircraft Company delivered […]

Orders for long-lasting U.S. manufactured goods posted their biggest gain on record in July on strong overseas demand for aircraft, and the underlying trend also remained firm, pointing to brisk economic growth. Transportation orders rose a record 74.2 percent as bookings for civilian aircraft more than tripled. Boeing had said earlier it received a record […]

Airline travel and everything associated with it has a way of bringing out the worst in people. And now that the airlines have reduced seat pitch to that of a Roman slave galley, we’ve entered the era of the cabin brawl. In case you didn’t hear about it, a United flight from Newark to Denver […]

Sooner or later, I knew it was coming: Connie Edwards’ aircraft collection wasn’t going to molder away in his hangar forever and this week, the day arrived. Over the weekend, the U.K.’s Sunday Express announced that Edwards’ collection of about a dozen World War II era fighters had been sold for $17 million to a […]

Slovenian planemaker Pipistrel says its new electric-powered training aircraft will slash training costs while pleasing the neighbors of the small airports it’s designed for. The WATTsUP two-seat trainer flew for the first time on Aug. 22 and will be unveiled publicly at the Salon de Blois airshow in France Aug. 30-31. “Technologies developed specially for […]

A Chinese Su-27 fighter made several “dangerous” and “unprofessional” passes at a U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon this week-coming as close as an estimated 20 feet at one point-in what the White House calleda “deeply concerning provocation.” The incident, which is reportedly in violation of international law, occurred Tuesday in international airspace in the South China […]