News

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 […]

Just as Airbus was completing plans for its successful crossing of the English Channel in an electric airplane Thursday, it appears as though it got beat to the punch by French pilot Hugues Duval flying an electric powered CRI-CRI Cristaline twin. Duval completed the flight Thursday evening, even though authorities attempted to block it, according […]

DTC DUAT, which lost its bid with the FAA to continue providing online flight services, is fighting for survival with a week left before it is shut down. DTC filed formal protests with the FAA over the recently awarded contracts that included two other current providers, Lockheed Martin and CSC DUATS. DTC also asked the […]

A small boomerang-shaped aircraft that will go for a test launch later this year could be the first unmanned aerial system to glide over the surface of Mars, if NASA’s project comes to fruition. The Prandtl-m prototype’s test, one of three in the planning stages, will include a launch from a high-altitude balloon at about […]

Pipistrel cancelled plans to symbolically fly its Alpha Electro electric-powered training aircraft over the English Channel on Tuesday after Siemens, the supplier of the motor, issued a “demand not to fly over the water with their motor,” said Pipistrel CEO Ivo Boscarol in a statement (PDF). Boscarol said his company’s flight has been in the […]

A high-flying entrepreneur came down to earth in a Calgary jail cell late Sunday after his multi-balloon publicity stunt ended with a parachute drop into the western Canadian city. Daniel Boria, 26, was charged with mischief endangering life after he attached a “$20 lawn chair” to 110 helium-filled balloons with the intent of skydiving from […]

A father and son aboard a Cessna 150 were killed when their aircraft was reportedly “broadsided” by an Air Force F-16 over Moncks Corner, South Carolina, on Tuesday. The F-16 pilot, Maj. Aaron Johnson, ejected and was not hurt. The jet crashed in a wooded area and nobody on the ground was hurt. The NTSB […]

Six pilots, the latest graduates of Able Flight’s training program, will receive their wings during a ceremony July 21 at EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh. This year’s class includes a pilot who was born without hands or feet, two who are quadriplegics, one who is a paraplegic, a deaf pilot and a wounded veteran. From mid-May […]

The sight of an otherwise normal-looking light twin flying around the patch with no one in the cockpit has just put a new spin on unmanned aerial systems. Aurora Flight Sciences of Virginia announced it completed a series of test flights of its Centaur Optionally Piloted Aircraft in June as part of a project with […]

Austria’s Hannes Arch won the fourth stop on the Red Bull Air Race tour in hot conditions on the course over the Danube River in downtown Budapest. Arch beat second place finisher and points leader Paul Bonhomme, of the U.K., by two-tenths of a second on a course that started with aircraft flying under the […]