News

Just a year and a half after first flight of the prototype SAM aircraft, President Thierry Zibi has put the company up for sale. Why, after so much work – design, fixturing, successful flight test, certification and orders – would that be a good time to sell the company? Zibi says, “I came to the […]

Frakes Aviation, which acquired the Mallard amphibian from Grumman and modified it with turbine engines, is in search of a new buyer who will take the airplanes back into production. “We’re looking for someone to take on the entire project,” Sam Jantzen, of Mallard Aircraft, who is working with Frakes, told AVweb this week. That […]

Orders for long-lasting U.S. manufactured goods posted their biggest gain on record in July on strong overseas demand for aircraft, and the underlying trend also remained firm, pointing to brisk economic growth. Transportation orders rose a record 74.2 percent as bookings for civilian aircraft more than tripled. Boeing had said earlier it received a record […]

Disney “imagineers” have found some unique uses for unmanned aerial systems (UAS) that could eventually see airborne puppets controlled by drones pulling the strings. The company has filed three patent applications to use the increasingly sophisticated little aircraft to widen its entertainment offerings at its theme parks. A couple of the patents address a proposed […]

Malaysian Airlines has been losing cabin crew at a higher than normal rate recently and the leader of its biggest union says there’s no mystery there. Abu Malek Ariff told AFP some employees “are now afraid to fly.” Since the missile attack on one of its aircraft in Ukraine, which followed the March disappearance of […]

A police helicopter crashed about 9 a.m. Sunday while trying to rescue an injured climber in the Picos de Europa mountain range in Spain, killing all three crew members on board. A fourth crew member, who had already exited the helicopter to aid the climber, survived and called for help. “They were carrying out a […]

A collection of historic aircraft that flew in the 1969 movie “The Battle of Britain” and then sat in storage in a Texas hangar for more than 40 years has been sold for more than 10 million pounds (almost $17 million) to a European dealer, the Sunday Express reported this weekend. The collection includes a […]

Two highly visible aviation experts are making career changes. AOPA announced this week that safety advocate Bruce Landsberg will retire from his position as president of the AOPA Foundation and executive director of the AOPA Air Safety Institute. Landsberg spent 22 years at AOPA and led the association’s safety efforts. And Jeff Skiles, who signed […]

Goodyear officially launched its newest blimp over the weekend, with a christening ceremony and a ceremonial flight from its base in Akron, Ohio. The airship, built from aluminum and carbon fiber, is the first of a new generation of blimps built for Goodyear by the Zeppelin factory in Germany. The former blimp fleet recalled Goodyear’s […]

The NTSB said on Monday it has revoked the party status of both the Independent Pilots Association and UPS Airlines relative to its ongoing investigation of UPS Flight 1354, an A300-600 air cargo flight that crashed on approach to Birmingham, Alabama, last August, killing both crew members on board. The board said it took the […]