News

State and local governments continue to struggle with sensible, much less consistent, regulation of unmanned aircraft systems, according to FAA Administrator Michael Huerta. Speaking at the AUVSI Xponential 2017 conference in Dallas this week, Huerta said the FAA is has made understanding what state and local governments want and need to regulate drone operations a […]

In case you haven’t noticed, computer chipmaker Intel is big on drones and automation in general because it wants to sell the chips that will power those devices. But according to Intel CEO Brian Krzanich, it’s not so much the gadgets themselves that are important, but the data that they’ll generate and how it will […]

The restored B-29 Doc made its airshow debut on Saturday, in the Defenders of Liberty Airshow at Barksdale Air Force Base, in Louisiana. “What was really special for us, we were able to meet up with a B-52 in flight, over Oklahoma,” Josh Wells, spokesman for Doc’s Friends, told AVweb this week. “That was majestic. […]

The FAA funding bill passed by Congress and signed by President Trump last week is good news for general aviation, according to analyses of the plan by several GA advocacy groups. “We appreciate the strong support shown by Congress in this omnibus measure for general aviation, especially in the critical areas of safety, certification and […]

While autonomous vehicles of all kinds, but especially cars, seem to be just around the corner, they won’t see wide acceptance unless they’re perceived to be at least as safe as airplanes. That’s the thinking in the budding autonomy industry, according to Chip Downing of Wind River, an Intel subsidiary that specializes in embedded software […]

In the world of drones, BLOS—for beyond line of sight—is a Holy Grail of sorts because it can untether unmanned aircraft from ground stations and remote operation, paving the way for true autonomous flight. However, thus far, aircraft manufacturers haven’t developed robust detect-and-avoid technology to allow drones to see other aircraft, including other drones. A […]

An Icon A5 amphibious light sport aircraft crashed about 9:20 a.m. on Monday along the shore of Lake Berryessa in Napa County, California, and two Icon employees were killed — Jon Karkow, 55, the pilot in command of the aircraft, and Cagri Sever, 41, who was a passenger. It’s the first fatal crash for the […]

The X-37B, an orbital unmanned spacecraft developed by the U.S. Air Force, has landed safely in Florida after completing its fourth mission, spending nearly two years (718 days) in space, the Air Force said on Sunday. “This mission once again set an on-orbit endurance record and marks the vehicle’s first landing in the state of […]

With drones, as with most things, the bigger they are, the harder they fall. That’s a principal finding of a report by the FAA’s Alliance for System Safety of UAS through Research Excellence (ASSURE), which involved 23 universities flinging drones at crash test dummies. The report uses a lot of academic energy to say that […]

Russian pilots have sent a petition to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) alleging that Rosaviatsiya, the government agency responsible for crew certification, is canceling the credentials of hundreds of pilots who trained at private schools rather than those run by the government department. The pilots claim the move is aimed at eliminating competition and […]