News

The former chief technical pilot on the Boeing 737 MAX has invoked his Fifth Amendment rights and refused to turn over documents subpoenaed by the Justice Department as part of its broad investigation into the crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia. Mark Forkner played a key role in the development of the aircraft and worked for […]

The Navy is investigating a landing mishap on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln that caused more than $2 million in damage to the aircraft and four others on the deck. The Navy Times says an E-2D Advanced Hawkeye missed all four arrestment wires and made “slight contact” with two F/A-18 EF Super Hornets during the […]

A couple of commercial space launch companies are steering clear of bringing their boosters back to Earth under their own power and are instead borrowing a technique from the dawn of space exploitation. Wired says United Launch Alliance and small-launch provider Rocket Lab plan to grab their boosters out of the air with helicopters as […]

Boeing is fundamentally redesigning the software architecture of the 737 MAX flight control system to take data from both of the system’s computers and to compare the data from the sensors feeding them. The existing system uses data from only one flight control computer and the second serves as a backup. In the new setup, […]

Canadian authorities appear to have a well-documented and recorded case of hypoxia in their investigation of the stall/spin fatal accident involving a Piper Navajo a year ago. On Aug. 1, 2018, an Aries Aviation PA-31, a well-maintained aircraft regularly flown by experienced pilots, inexplicably spun into a 10,000-foot mountain peak while on initial descent to […]

As a new arms race looms between the world’s superpowers, Russia has upped the ante with the announcement of a new strategic stealth bomber. President Vladimir Putin has confirmed he’ll be on hand when the PAK DA begins “trials” at the Flight Test and Development Center near Moscow next month. Images of the aircraft in […]

Boeing has told shareholders its 777X likely won’t fly by the end of the year as planned because of issues with the GE9X engine. However it isn’t adjusting its late 2020 delivery projections for the aircraft and the first revenue airplane for Lufthansa is off the assembly line. The GE9X is the largest and most […]

In a vote along party lines, the Senate approved the nomination of former Delta VP of flight pperations Steve Dickson as the next FAA administrator on Wednesday. Dickson, who was a line pilot with Delta before going to the head office, was nominated by President Donald Trump in March. While at Delta, he served on […]

Honeywell announced at Oshkosh that it has purchased TruTrak Flight Systems, an innovator in experimental-class autopilots that recently added applications in the certified world. TruTrak will become part of the BendixKing avionics group. “TruTrak is a natural fit with BendixKing, and this acquisition opens up an exciting new market to us,” says Carl Esposito, president […]

The return of air demonstration teams to the Air Venture air show was marked in 2016 with the graceful routine of the Royal Canadian Air Force Snowbirds over Wittman Field. The nine-plane precision formation aerobatics display took place on the final two days at the show. Another Canadian aircraft wowed the crowd. The gigantic Martin […]