News

The inadequate restraint of five large mine-resistant military vehicles being carried as cargo in a National Airlines B747 was the cause of a fiery crash shortly after takeoff from Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan in April 2013, the NTSB said in its probable-cause meeting on Tuesday. All seven crew members died in the crash. At least […]

Damage to the batteries during the long flight to Hawaii can’t be quickly repaired, the Solar Impulse team said on Wednesday, so the unique aircraft will remain hangared until April 2016 before resuming its round-the-world flight. “During the first ascend on day one of the flight from Nagoya to Hawaii, the battery temperature increased due […]

A teenage girl found along a roadside in a remote area of Washington state on Monday had been walking alone in the wilderness for two days after the Beech A-35 Bonanza in which she was a passenger crashed, apparently killing her two step-grandparents, according to local authorities. Autumn Veatch, 16, was found by hikers near […]

Solar Impulse 2, the solar-powered airplane that successfully crossed the Pacific from Japan to Hawaii two weeks ago, will stay on the ground for at least two to three more weeks to repair “irreversible” damage to its batteries, the team has announced. During the record-breaking five-day oceanic flight, the batteries overheated due to over-insulation. There […]

Lockheed Martin is working on an $8 billion deal to acquire Sikorsky, which went up for sale by parent company United Technologies Corp. last month, according to press reports on Monday. The deal could close within days, according to The Wall Street Journal. Sikorsky’s helicopter business would be a “growth engine” for Lockheed, according to […]

A restored Zero fighter plane from World War II is set to take flight over Japan next week, marking the first time since the war’s end 70 years ago that one of the iconic aircraft has flown in Japanese airspace, the Japan Times reported on Monday. The Mitsubishi A6M3 Zero had been in storage in […]

Even as it ponders the fate of its flagship A380 airliner, Airbus has reportedly filed patent applicationsfor an even larger design. Airbus hasn’t had a new order for the A380 in more than a year and now there are at least three used super jumbos on the market, further diluting the already-rarified market. That apparently […]

As the public relations-spawned dissection of two flights over the English Channel by electric aircraft late last week got into finer and finer details, a big-picture perspective surfaced in the AVweb inbox. The first flight of an electric aircraft over the English Channel happened more than 30 years ago but it was overshadowed by perhaps […]

Naming IFR fixes after celebrities and notable landmarks is a common practice, but renaming them due to political controversy is not. However, that’s going to be the case with three waypoints for West Palm Beach International named after the real estate mogul and would-be presidential candidate: DONLD, TRMMP and UFIRD. The FAA said this week […]

Jim Bede, who for more than 50 years designed airplanes, aircraft components and homebuilding kits, died Thursday in Cleveland, Ohio, after suffering an aneurysm. His company in Medina, Bedecorp, sells plans and kits for a series of aircraft including the BD-4B and BD-17. His early design, the BD-1 from the early 1960s, evolved into the […]