News

Commercial supersonic flight, alternative fuels and autonomy rank high on NASA’s first 20-year road map of research priorities for aeronautics, released on Monday. The draft plan (PDF) covers 15 fields of research, including space exploration, robotics, nanotechnology and information technology. NASA first issued a research road map in 2012; this is the first update, and […]

Cessna has been working for a while now on offering diesel power for its 172 and 182 single-engine aircraft, with certification of the JT-A variants expected maybe last year, then maybe this year, but this week the company said the certification timeline is “undefined,” at least for the 182, and production on the avgas-powered 182T […]

Pilatus flew its PC-24 twinjetfor the first time, about 10 a.m. Monday morning, from Buochs airport in central Switzerland. The airplane flew for 55 minutes, and the company said “the flight went exactly as planned with no problems whatsoever.” The jet used less than 2,000 feet of runway for takeoff, and climbed to 10,000 feet, […]

United Airlines has defended itself publicly and will likely get the chance to do so in court against allegationsit discriminated against an autistic passenger and her family by ordering them off their flight to Portland May 5. Juliette Forbes, 15, and her mother, brother and father were escorted off the aircraft by police after the […]

Four of six people aboard an Airbus A400M military transport were killed with the aircraft crashed in a field in Seville, Spain, Saturday. The new four-engine turboprops are assembled in Seville and the aircraft was on a test flight when it hit an electrical tower while attempting an emergency landing. The nature of the emergency […]

During a test flight on Friday, Aeromobil’s flying-car prototype crashed, after the pilot, designer Stefan Klein, pulled the parachute. Klein suffered no injuries, according to Aeromobil’s statement, and the airplane was “only partially damaged.” News photos show the aircraft apparently mostly intact, with some damage to the fuselage. “Experience and data from the test flight […]

The Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles that were rescued from freezing Cape Cod waters last winter with the help of volunteer general aviation pilots are now ready to return to the sea, and the airlift organizers haven’t forgotten their GA supporters. “In celebration of the turtles’ release, on May 16, GA pilots are invited to fly […]

A Piper PA-32 Saratoga crashed on Interstate 285 in Atlanta about 10 a.m. Friday morning, killing all four on board. Nobody on the freeway was hurt, but the highway was shut down in both directions for hours, to secure the crash site for investigators. The airplane had departed from Runway 3R at Dekalb Peachtree Airport, […]

The FAA contractor who started a fire at the Chicago Air Route Traffic Control Center during a suicide attempt last fall will plead guilty to federal charges in June. In court on Thursday, Brian Howard’s attorney entered a not guilty plea as a formality that buys time to process a deal with prosecutors, the Chicago […]

The brief test flight of an unmanned SpaceX capsule on Wednesday was the first trial for a system that will allow astronauts to abort their launches should something go awry. It also marked progress for NASA’s plans to once again transport astronauts, replacing the retired space shuttle program with commercially made spacecraft. “I think this […]