News

Paul Allen’s ambitious, fixed-wing satellite launch platform, the Stratolaunch, rolled out of its hangar Wednesday to begin ground and taxi testing. The colossal twin-fuselage aircraft, built by Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites, is projected to be—by wingspan—the largest aircraft to have ever taken flight, at 385 feet wide. The prototype has a 500,000-pound empty weight, a […]

A JetBlue Airways Airbus 320 made an emergency landing in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Tuesday after a laptop computer stored in an overhead began emitting smoke. The flight landed safely with no injuries. Passengers told news outlets that the incident caused significant smoke in the cabin, although none reported signs of flames. The flight was […]

With Memorial Day behind us, the summer season takes off, and EAA has plenty of events in the works for this summer’s biggest aviation show, AirVenture. The U.S. Navy Blue Angels will make their first full team performance at the show on Friday and Saturday. Also flying at the show for the first time will […]

The NTSB this week released a preliminary report on the fatal Learjet crash in Teterboro two weeks ago, in which two pilots were killed. While approaching the airport, the crew started to turn toward the assigned runway later than usual, the safety board said. The airplane didn’t start to turn until it was less than […]

A sequel to Top Gun, the popular movie about pilots in the U.S. Navy flight school, will begin shooting sometime in the next year, actor Tom Cruise told reporters last week. Asked about the rumors during the Australian morning show “Sunrise,” Cruise said, “It is definitely happening.” No other details were released by Cruise or […]

Lockheed Martin’s LM-100J civil freighter has completed its first flight, the company has announced. The airplane, part of the Super Hercules cargo line, will perform in a variety of roles, such as firefighting, medevac and VIP transport. It also can deliver bulk and oversize goods to hard-to-reach locations. The first flight went “flawlessly,” said Wayne […]

A high-tech airship is under construction in a Silicon Valley hangar, according to a recent report in the Guardian, and it will likely be more than 650 feet from nose to tail. “It’s going to be massive on a grand scale,” one source told the paper, though that would still be smaller than classic airships […]

A member of the U.S. Navy’s skydiving team, the Leap Frogs, died on Sunday afternoon after his parachute malfunctioned during a Fleet Week airshow in Jersey City, N.J., the Navy has confirmed. The skydiver, whose name has not been released, landed in the Hudson River and was immediately retrieved by U.S. Coast Guard members who […]

Regional airlines say the FAA is vastly understating the cost of a proposed AD that will require them to replace 10,482 passenger seats in various small airliners. The FAA said the AD will only cost the airlines a total of $900,000 because it is only tallying the labor cost of removing the Slim and Slimplus […]

John Travolta is hanging up his four-barred Qantas uniform and donating his personal Boeing 707 to an Australian museum, which will restore it. Travolta said he plans to personally deliver the Boeing to the Historic Aircraft Restoration Society (HARS) in Illawarra, New South Wales, after some maintenance on the aircraft. Travolta discussed the possibility of […]