News

The National Championship Air Races will take place in Reno next week, Sept. 16 to 20, and this week, teams already are on site getting prepared for the competition and the qualifying events, which start on Sunday. Custom-built race planes will compete around pylons at speeds up to 500 mph and more. The show also […]

Members of the Senate and the House returned to Washington, D.C., on Tuesday after their August recess, to face an imminent deadline to deal with funding the FAA. The current FAA funding bill expires on Sept. 30. Industry advocates are hoping there won’t be a series of temporary extensions and shutdowns like in 2011, when […]

Diamond Aircraft, flying a DA42 twin, has completed a series of fully autonomous flight tests culminating in several landings without any input from human pilots. The tests used a new fly-by-wire system Diamond has been developing for light aircraft and were completed at Diamond’s Wiener Neustadt headquarters in Austria. The trials may lead to fielding […]

It might be a stretch to say this vehicle “flew,” since it barely rose above the ground and the three-axis controls seem a bit limited — but a hobbyist in the UK did get his home-built multi-rotor aircraft aloft for the first time, and documented it in a YouTube video. The design is reminiscent of […]

The science team aboard Nautilus, a research vessel operated by the Ocean Exploration Trust, recently explored the wreckage of the USS Macon, an aircraft-carrier dirigible operated by the U.S. Navy that crashed off the coast of California and sank in 1935. The researchers used remotely operated vehicles to explore the remains of the airship and […]

American Red Bull Air Race pilot Kirby Chambliss had his strongest finish in three seasons, claiming third place in a turbulent race at Spielberg, Austria, Sunday. It was Chambliss’ first time on the podium since the race in New York in 2010 and it was won by Australia’s Matt Hall, who had his first top […]

A team of students and their professor from a Brazilian university say they’ve set five new records for an aircraft powered by a four-cylinder engine. Anequim (Portuguese for Mako shark) went 323 mph over a 3-kilometer course. That’s 33 mph faster than Jon Sharp’s Nemesis, the current record holder, which was the undisputed champion in […]

A teacher in New York City was arrested Friday on charges of flying a drone in Louis Armstrong Stadium the evening before during a U.S. Open tennis match. The drone crashed into empty seats, and no one was injured, The Associated Press reported. Daniel Verley, 26, faces charges of reckless endangerment and operating a drone […]

Although it hasn’t been officially confirmed, last week’s reported collision between a drone and a Piper PA-23 was, in fact, a bird strike. Residue on the aircraft’s de-icing boot was analyzed by the Smithsonian Institution and found to contain the remains of a small, non-predatory bird, sources familiar with the investigation told AVweb on Friday. […]

Matching serial numbers from a piece of flaperon found on a French island in July confirm the debris is from Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, French investigators said Thursday. While Malaysian officials announced in August the 9-foot piece was from the Boeing 777 that disappeared in March 2014, the French government held off on its own […]