News

Airplane shipments are down for the first half of 2016, the General Aviation Manufacturers Association reported Friday. There were 970 units shipped for the first six months of the year, a 4.5 percent decline. Billings for new airplanes fell 11 percent to $9.3 billion, while rotorcraft billings saw a 32.5 percent drop over last year, […]

SocialFlight.com has added a new feature to its website and mobile app, Expert-Led Online Community Forums. The forums are available from the user’s menu and the event map on the website and are in the 5.1 release of the free app for iOS and Android devices. Topics include aircraft ownership, operation & maintenance, pilot training, […]

By law, the FAA has dropped the controversial “biographical profile” for prequalified (college program and military veteran) air traffic control trainee applicants and will hire 1,400 new trainees this year.Applications will only be taken from Aug. 8-15 at the U.S. government’s official jobs website but applicants can set up an online profile before that. In […]

Moon Express, a Cape Canaveral-based private company, announced this week it has received government approval to send an autonomous lander to the moon and plans to do so next fall. The multi-agency collaboration with the company includes NASA and the FAA. The approval puts Moon Express in the lead among other contenders for the $20 […]

One firefighter is dead and more than a dozen injured when an Emirates Boeing 777 burst into flames today after an emergency landing at Dubai’s airport. All 300 passengers and crew were able to evacuate safely, but flames consumed the airliner, Reuters reported. An estimated thirteen were taken to a hospital. A landing gear problem […]

Airbus engineers based in Silicon Valley are working to develop “an autonomous flying vehicle platform,” called Vahana, that could provide transport for both passengers and cargo, the company has announced. Flight tests of the first vehicle prototype are slated for the end of 2017. Ultimately, the system could operate similarly to car-sharing applications, with the […]

The numbers were up in all categories at AirVenture 2016 according to figures released by EAA Tuesday. The organization said about 563,000 people attended the weeklong show, up 1 percent from last year, despite several days of rain and storms. The weather was sunny and mild every day of the 2015 show. Chairman Jack Pelton […]

In the eight months since the FAA opened its online drone registration system, more than 500,000 hobbyists have signed up, FAA Administrator Michael Huerta said today in Washington, already outnumbering the 320,000 registered manned aircraft. Huerta said the FAA now is taking further steps to ensure the drone industry can continue to grow “at the […]

Lockheed Martin is serious about developing lighter-than-air vehicles, and now it has patented a new “spider” device that solves a maintenance problem for airship operators. Traditionally, teams of workers have been required to manually scan the airship envelope to find and repair tiny holes that couldn’t be found any other way. Now, Lockheed’s engineers have […]

The FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation has awarded to Virgin Galactic the operator license it needs to move forward with taxi and flight tests for SpaceShipTwo, the company announced this week. SpaceShipTwo is the passenger-carrying vehicle that ultimately will be carried to about 50,000 feet by WhiteKnightTwo. From that altitude, SpaceShipTwo will be released […]