News

An accurate tally of the number of U.S. active aircraft equipped with ADS-B is now available thanks to the flight tracking app FlightAware. The company, which started with a single feed from FAA ATC data ten years ago, now offers global flight tracking through satellite and ground stations. It can keep track of which aircraft […]

Microsoft co-founder and aviation entrepreneur Paul Allen died Monday after a struggle with cancer. He was 65. Allen is well known in the tech industry as a co-founder of Microsoft in the 1970s, along with Bill Gates. But he had wide-ranging interests including major business ventures in aviation, most recently the Stratolaunch multi-engine jet designed […]

Wheels Up, an audacious entrant to the charter aircraft market six years ago, has hit the billion-dollar mark in business value and is expanding its business model. At a news conference at NBAA in Orlando on Monday, Wheels Up CEO Ken Dichter said the company now operates 93 aircraft and employs 400 pilots and is […]

Aerion Corporation says it will fly its AS2 supersonic business jet in 2023 and will do its first trans-Atlantic flight with the aircraft on Oct. 24 of that year, the 20th anniversary of the last commercial flight of the Concorde supersonic airliner. At a news conference at NBAA in Orlando, CEO Tom Vice said that […]

Textron Aviation announced two new fleet agreements with NetJets at the National Business Aviation Association Business Aviation Convention & Exhibition (NBAA-BACE) on Monday. The agreements give NetJets the option to purchase up to 175 Cessna Citation Longitudes and as many as 150 Citation Hemisphere business jets. The Longitude option includes first deliveries as early as […]

Starting next year, U.S. astronauts will no longer have to hitch a ride from Russia to reach the International Space Station, says NASA—both a SpaceX rocket and a Boeing spacecraft will provide ISS crew transport. “The first human spaceflight aboard a SpaceX rocket to the International Space Station (ISS) is expected to take place in […]

Bell says it is ready to “transform” on-demand delivery service and has teamed up with Yamato, a Japanese shipping and logistics company, to develop electric-powered cargo drones by the mid-2020s. “Through this joint effort, we are eager to set a new precedent for on-demand delivery and future large-scale logistics,” said Scott Drennan, Bell’s vice president […]

EAA has announced it will fund up to $10,000 each toward the cost of flight training for up to 100 young people, thanks to a $1 million grant from the Ray Foundation. The foundation, based in Naples, Florida, aims to help boost the flight-training success rate from the current 20 percent to 80 percent. The […]

Flight testing is formerly underway to create what Texas-based modifier Blackhawk expects to be the world’s fastest King Air. The latest STC project includes retrofitting Pratt & Whitney PT6A-67A engines to replace the stock PT6A-60A engines on 12,500-pound and 14,000-pound gross weight models of the King Air 300, of which there are roughly 300 in […]

Bombardier announced at NBAA 2018 in Orlando, Florida, this week that it is nearly 70 percent completed with certification flight testing of two new clean-sheet-design long-range business jets—the Global 5500 and Global 6500. The new jets in Bombardier’s Global family are powered by Rolls-Royce Pearl engines, which are purpose-built for the Global 6500 and 5500. […]