News

The B-29 Superfortress “Doc” came alive Friday morning as the restoration team fired up each engine for the first time – persisting through 15 tense minutes when no. 2 failed to start after multiple attempts. The event, captured on webcam from Wichita, marked the start of a series of test runs before the Superfortress gets […]

The restoration team working on the B-29 Superfortress “Doc” will go on live webcam Friday morning for the first engine startups. The event will start at 8 a.m. CT in Wichita, where Doc is undergoing work at its hangar. Tom Bertels, a Doc’s Friends board member, told AVweb in an email Thursday the team wants […]

A hunter in Colorado was arrested for assault and menacing after allegedly shooting an ultralight pilot in flight. James Johnson, 50, was flying over his cornfield in the Byers area on Sept. 1 when he was reportedly hit with shotgun pellets, the Denver Post reported this week. Johnson’s injuries were minor and he was treated […]

It has been rumored off and on over the years that various big automakers are secretly at work on a flying car, and this week patent drawings emerged that show some ideas from Toyota’s drawing board. The patent application, which is dated Sept. 3, shows drawings of a car with four “stackable wings.” The wings, […]

Beacon flew its first flights on Tuesday for a new all-you-can-fly service. The company charges a monthly fee of $2,000 and offers 18 flights every day between Boston Logan Airport and Westchester Airport in New York. CEO Wade Eyerly says the service will get travelers point-to-point in about two hours, which is about half the […]

Amazon is joining the commercial space race and hopes to launch paying passengers into low earth orbit by the end of the decade. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced Tuesday that his company Blue Origin is taking over Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral and renaming it Exploration Park. “Residents of the Space Coast have enjoyed […]

Five aviation groups have submitted a letter (PDF) to the U.S. Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs asking it to amend legislation that would cap benefits for veterans who take flight training. Under the bill, which is similar to one being taken up the House, veterans taking flying training would be limited to about $20,000 in […]

A DeHavilland DHC-3T turbine Otter floatplane with 10 people on board crashed about 6:30 a.m. Tuesday in Iliamna, Alaska, killing three people, according to local reports. All three were out-of-state residents, Alaska officials said. NTSB spokesman Clint Johnson said the Otter crashed shortly after takeoff from East Wind Lake. “They were headed to a fishing […]

A recent FAA report about a rapid increase in drone sightings near aircraft may have caused alarm, but according to an analysis by the Academy of Model Aeronautics, few of those sightings represented any threat. In a review of the 764 reports compiled by the FAA, the AMA found that only 27, or 3.5 percent, […]

In its final report last week on a fatal Gulfstream IV crash, the NTSB asked NBAA to conduct a study of flight-crew compliance with checklist procedures, and NBAA has responded that it “stands ready to deliver.” The NTSB asked NBAA to analyze existing data to check for compliance with manufacturer-required routine flight-control checks before takeoff, […]