News

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 […]

China’s long-awaited C919 single-aisle airliner flew for the first time on Friday and completed an 80-minute low-altitude and low-speed loop around the Yangtze River delta area before landing in Shanghai. The Chinese government, which built the airliner through its wholly owned Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC), issued a statement saying the flight went well […]

Boeing is looking at offering derivatives of the 737 MAX to replace NATO militaries’ fleets of aging and thirsty Boeing 707s, according to a report by Aviation Week. The Boeing 707 was the starting airframe for 140 special observation aircraft still in use around the world (including the E-6, E-3, E-8, RC-135, OC-135 and WC-135). […]

The SolarStratos prototype electric aircraft made its maiden voyage Friday morning with test pilot Damian Hischier at the controls. Rapahel Domjan, the project’s founder, hopes the 81-foot wide, 1,000-pound plane will ultimately climb as high as 75,000 feet with pilots wearing pressurized space suits. The cabin itself will not be pressurized. In addition to its […]

After many years pushing their own electronic flight bag solution, Jeppesen has reached a deal with ForeFlight to make Jeppesen chart and flight data available on the ForeFlight app. “The number-one question I’ve gotten from pilots around the world is ‘when can I get Jeppesen charts on ForeFlight?’” says Ken Sain, Jeppesen COO. A Jeppesen […]

On Thursday, the Senate Science and Transportation Subcommittee on Aviation Operations, Safety and Security grilled United Airlines President Scott Kirby and Chicago Department of Aviation Commissioner Ginger Evans about the dismal state of commercial air travel generally—at least for economy class passengers—and in specific the incident on April 9 in which Dr. David Dao refused […]

A Cherokee Six that had, according to the local Seattle Times, just departed Paine Field made a forced landing on a nearby street after striking a power line pole then a traffic light Tuesday afternoon. Both the pilot, believed to be the owner of the airplane, Justin Dunaway, and his passenger were uninjured. Two people […]

Virgin Galactic has successfully tested its feather re-entry system in flight for the first time, the company said this week. The system, which is designed to enable VSS Unity to safely return to Earth after carrying tourists to the edge of space, reconfigures the vehicle by folding up its twin tail booms. The structure acts […]

Officials from the FAA visited Cirrus Aircraft in Duluth, Minnesota, on Tuesday to award the company with a production certificate for the Cirrus jet. The certification means that FAA staffers no longer need to check each individual jet before delivery, which will help the company to ramp up its production. “We are just reaching one […]