Aviation News

At its Gunskirchen, Austria factory, Rotax on Thursday rolled out its 50,000th 912-series aircraft engine and celebrated the 25th anniversary of the engine family with a fly-in at the nearby Wels airport. Manufacturers from around Europe flew in Rotax-powered aircraft for sales demos. The company combined the event with an annual homecoming of Can-Am Spyder […]

Our review of the weeks aviation news turned up stories including delivery of the 500th Phenom family jet, word that the application window has opened for this years AirVenture Cup race, ALPAs praise for the progress of NextGen, and an announcement that Airbus just delivered three of its heli-lift EC225 helicopters for duty in Africa. […]

This week has seen two seen two military jet crashes, fortunately with no serious injuries. The first, a Marine AV-8B Harrier, impacted in a residential neighborhood in Imperial, Calif., at 4:20 PDT on Wednesday, destroying three homes and leading to the evacuation of eight others. The pilot ejected safely and was hospitalized for evaluation. The […]

SkyCrafts SD-1 single-place Minisport has completed flight testing successfully, meeting all the performance requirements needed for S-LSA Certification. According to the companys report, the aircraft has good longitudinal and latitudinal stability and exhibited no issues with flutter, vibration or dangerous stall/spin tendencies. SkyCraft was able to verify the performance specifications for the SD-1 achieved by […]

The last plane to undergo maintenance inside Boeing Wichitas facility, an E-4B, started its engines and took off Thursday. It flew to the south, then gracefully turned back north for a final goodbye pass before disappearing from sight. A fixture in Wichita, Kan., since 1927, Boeing once employed as many as 40,000 people there. It […]

Virgin Galactic, the privately funded space company owned by Sir Richard Bransons Virgin Group and Abu Dhabis aabar Investments PJS, and Spaceport America announcedthat they have signed a joint agreement with the Federal Aviation Administration that helps clear the path for commercial flights of SpaceShipTwo. The agreement sets out the parameters for how routine space […]

As spring moves towards summer our weekly review of what’s going on in aviation on SocialFlight reveals more and more events, especially pure, grassroots, small airport fly-ins. The first one we ran across, right in the heart of the country, is in Central City, Neb., where there will be a fly-in breakfast and lunch, on […]

Federal border security agents have sharply reduced intercepts of general aviation aircraft, following complaints by pilots that excessive police action at small airports is restricting the freedom to fly and a meeting with AOPA President Mark Baker according to a report by National Public Radio. An official with U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Office of […]

If all goes as planned next month, scheduled seaplane service from downtown New York City to Washington, D.C. and Boston will again be a reality. Targeting business travelers on the northeast corridor who despise security lines and the transit time from Manhattan to LaGuardia or Newark Airports, Tailwind Air Serviceis gearing up to offer 90-minute […]

Gulfstream has filed a patent application for a new nose gear design that is claimed to reduce overflight noise when the landing gear is extended. According to the patent application, Noise generated by an aircraft as it approaches a runway while landing can be a nuisance to surrounding communities. The noise generated by an aircraft […]