News

The Senate’s aviation subcommittee will investigate the FAA’s oversight of the Boeing 787 design, Reuters reported on Wednesday. The hearing has not been officially announced but is expected in the next few weeks, according to an aide. Reuters also noted that under special conditions granted to Boeing by federal regulators in 2007, the lithium-ion battery […]

A nine-month test using infrasound to repel birds has been successful, Technology International Inc., of Louisiana, has reported. Low-frequency sounds, which are not heard by humans, were generated using a rotary woofer, the company said. The sounds “jam the birds’ acoustic navigational system … [and] mimic the atmospheric disruptive features of unstable weather conditions that […]

Roadable aircraft developer Terrafugia is suggesting production and delivery of the device may come later rather than sooner. In a carefully worded news release on Tuesday, the Massachusetts company said it might have to build a third prototype based on the testing it has done so far on the second machine. “Once the engineering team […]

Canada’s Bombardier has landed firmly in rival Embraer’s backyard with Brazilian certification of its latest business jet model, the Global 6000. The companies, both of which accuse each other of being unfairly supported by their respective governments, are involved in a bare-knuckle scrap for dominance in the small airliner market and Embraer’s ambitious business jet […]

Cessna is the latest business jet builder to make a sales call on Nigeria in the last couple of months and the country’s business leaders expect more. A report in Ventures Magazine says the Wichita planemaker had a CJ3 and Sovereign on the ramp at Murtala Muhammed Airport and Abuja Airport last week trying to […]

E-Volo, a German company that successfully flew an innovative electric-powered vertical-takeoff aircraft in 2011, now says it is ready to build a two-person design. Germany’s transport ministry will have to create a new category and develop new regulations to allow the aircraft to fly, and E-Volo says that process is under way. The company said […]

Transit police who were using explosives to train bomb-sniffing dogs left one of the bombs aboard an Air Canada 767 that later carried passengers, a taxpayers group reported this week. The incident happened about two years ago, in January 2011, and was only confirmed after the group filed a Freedom of Information request. The dog […]

Aviation safety officials from the U.S. and Japan on Monday visited the GS Yuasa Corp., in Kyoto, which manufactured the lithium-ion batteries for the 787 that led to the fleet’s grounding last week. The investigators toured the plant and were briefed by company officials about the design, production and quality, according to Reuters. The U.S. […]

The NTSB says several of the flight control cables were broken on a Piper Cherokee that crashed, killing four people, including two high-profile college basketball coaches, in 2011. Oklahoma State University Women’s Coach Kurt Budke and Assistant Coach Miranda Serna died along with pilot Olin Branstetter, 82, and his wife Paula, 79, when the Cherokee […]

The NTSB has cast doubt on Japan’s Transport Safety Board’s speculation that a charging overload was behind battery fires that led to the grounding of Boeing 787 fleet. In an update Sunday, the NTSB said the flight data recorder aboard the Japan Airlines aircraft whose APU battery burned on the ground at Boston’s Logan Airport […]