Maintenance

An apparent “denial of service” attack took down AVweb for several hours this afternoon. The system is back up and running, and new security measures have been installed. We are resending today’s Flash as a convenience for readers and a service to advertisers. We are also repopulating our news feed with the latest breaking information. […]

The FAA has reminded Southwest Airlines and its unionized mechanics who is really in charge when it comes to flight safety and not so subtly warned them not to let their current disputes get in the way. Southwest sued the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association a week ago implying its members grounded dozens of its planes […]

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, […]

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 […]

Failure of the nose-strut O-ring seal on many Cessnas is just so familiar. According to McFarlane Aviation Products, one key cause is a rolling deformation of the rubber O-ring on the chrome strut shaft. Enough twisting and the O-ring begins to tear. Instead of a conventional circular cross section, the PMA seal has an X […]

Delta officially opened its new state-of-the-art jet engine test cell at the airline’s TechOps facility in Atlanta, Georgia, on Thursday. The test cell is capable of running a mounted, stationary engine at full power with 150,000 pounds of thrust, allowing it to test engines more powerful than anything yet built. According to Delta, it is […]

The Marine Corps version of the F-35 might only last 25 percent of its presumed life expectancy according to a Pentagon report obtained by Bloomberg. The news service is reporting the short takeoff-vertical landing F-35B may only last 2,100 hours instead of the projected life limit of 8,000 hours. At a unit cost of about […]

With flying activity declining, many aircraft sit idle for months at a time. This causes serious corrosion issues inside the engines and in this AVweb video, RAM Aircraft of Waco, Texas, tells us how to avoid these problems. view on YouTube

This week, AVweb‘s news roundup uncovered reports on acceptance for a new flying boat, a company’s 10,000th transponder delivery, an anniversary for an online ground school provider and an organization taking applications for an aircraft competition. The roundup also found announcements about an acquisition in the aviation lighting industry, a new aircraft maintenance pickup and […]

The rebuilt prototype XP-82 celebrated its first official flight on Monday and by all accounts it went well. The Tom Reilly XP-82 Twin Mustang Restoration Project confirmed the flight, which was a lot longer than its first hop three weeks ago. As we reported in early January, the aircraft, which is actually based on the […]