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Among the many intriguing sights at EAA AirVenture last month was an array of four brightly painted little RV-3s, just off Aeroshell Square, each with the word “ethanol” on its empennage and tail feathers. Nearby, a Mooney 201 also sported ethanol livery. The RV-3 E-Squadron has been flying for 13 years on corn-based ethanol fuel, […]

A federation of French and Japanese aerospace companies agreed in Paris last month to begin research on the development of a civilian supersonic transport airplane. The French group includes Airbus, EADS and Dassault Aviation, and the Japanese group comprises 98 companies, including Honda, Mitsubishi and Kawasaki. In Russia, Sukhoi has been working since the 1980s […]

One problem for future SSTs, though, is restrictions on supersonic flight over land. Aerion says it will comply with the current rules by cruising at Mach 0.98 over the U.S. In other parts of the world where rules require that the boom can’t reach the ground, Aerion can comply while flying as fast as Mach […]

When the Concorde quit flying, it seemed like the end of an era for supersonic passenger aircraft — but more likely, it was a blip in what will be a continuing story. Working on that next chapter are several companies laboring quietly away, hoping to build the transport of the future within the next 10 […]

As the military uses its UAVs, it finds ever more uses for them and sometimes that involves flying them over civilian airspace. The FAA and the Air Force now have a protocol agreement on allowing the use of UAVs when lives could be at stake. “Now, we have a process to receive approval to fly […]

While aviation groups and politicians in the Lower 48 worry about the increasing use of unmanned aerial vehicles, Alaska officials can’t get enough of them. John Madden, who’s in charge of homeland security for the Alaska area (and has not recently hosted televised football), told a Senate commerce committee hearing the skies over Alaska should […]

As the FAA wrestles with how to address the issue of keeping aging aircraft in the air (and also wrestling with the groups representing those flying old airplanes), the answer, as it so often does, may come from the military. A military-funded research project, called Prognosis, at Carnegie Mellon University is attempting to predict metal […]

As British authorities were swooping down on the suspects, AOPA was announcing an updated Airport Watch program, which it developed with the TSA. As AOPA’s Chris Dancy told AVweb in our Friday audio news interview, the revised program stresses each pilot’s role in prevention and protection of his or her aircraft from use for nefarious […]

As they say, timing is everything and the heightened interest in personal air travel that will likely result from the latest developments coupled with recent and very public announcements — particularly from Eclipse (with its provisional certification) and Honda (with its plans to certify the HondaJet) — could have an impact on the burgeoning very […]

If there can be any good news out of a terror scare like the one last week in Britain, it’s that those who can afford alternatives to the airlines start thinking that way again. Industry observers expect increased interest in the full range of business aircraft in the wake of the discovery of an alleged […]