News

A banner towing pilot died and dozens of others had a close call on Friday when a banner plane flying along Fort Lauderdale’s beachfront hit a condo building and fell about 150 feet to a pool deck below. The Piper Pawnee operated by Aerial Banners Inc. hit the building between the 16th and 17th floor. […]

The NTSB has located and recovered the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) from Atlas Air Flight 3591, a Boeing 767 cargo jet that crashed in Trinity Bay in Anahuac, Texas, on Saturday. The flight data recorder has not yet been located. According to the NTSB, the CVR is being transported to the NTSB labs in Washington, […]

Superior Air Parts has grounded all of its XP-382 and XP-400 experimental engines due to detonation problems found in some XP-400s, according to AVweb sister publication Kitplanes. The company has also implemented a mandatory buy-back program for both engine types. Both the grounding and the buy-backs are effective immediately. “Throughout Superior Air Parts’ 50-plus year […]

The FAA has issued a new rule prohibiting the transport of lithium ion cells or batteries as cargo on passenger aircraft. This revision of the Hazardous Materials Regulations also requires lithium ion cells and batteries to be shipped at not more than a 30 percent charge on cargo-only aircraft and limits the use of alternative […]

Rolls-Royce has removed itself from the competition to power Boeing’s proposed New Midsize Airplane (NMA) platform. The company announced on Thursday that while it believes the NMA platform complements Boeing’s existing product range, it isn’t able to commit to the planned timeline for the project. Rolls-Royce says it will continue to develop the next-generation UltraFan […]

The Aircraft Electronics Association (AEA) annual market report contains good news for avionics manufacturers and shops. Compared to 2017, last year’s total sales topped $2.7 billion, a gain of 17.3 percent. This uptick follows a modest 2.9 percent rise from 2016 to 2017, that in turn followed two years of single-digit decline. Of the total, […]

Bombardier will be quadrupling the existing footprint of its Singapore Service Center, according to an announcement from the company on Tuesday. The expansion, which is taking the 100,000-square-foot service center to approximately 430,000 square feet, will add heavy structural and composite repair capabilities, a paint facility, a parts depot and new customer facilities as well […]

The FAA has partnered with drone operations software company Kittyhawk to redesign the agency’s B4UFLY mobile app for recreational unmanned aircraft systems (UAS/drone) operators. According to the FAA, the new version, which is scheduled to launch in April 2019, will be aimed at improving user experience. Until the new app is released, the FAA says […]

NASA’s latest mission is to watch the weather. Space weather, that is. Planned to launch in August 2022 to the International Space Station, the Atmospheric Waves Experiment (AWE) will “focus on colorful bands of light in Earth’s atmosphere, called airglow, to determine what combination of forces drive space weather in the upper atmosphere.” “Space weather […]

What’s being billed as possibly the last unrestored North American P-51D Mustang is being listed for a cool $4.5 million. And while that seems like a hefty sum, consider that this Mustang comes with a trove of spares, including “approximately 20” Merlin engines and a raft of new-old-stock airframe components. Last flown in 1983, the […]