Business & Military

Maximum endurance test flights on highly polished commercial aircraft can be boring—taking the phrase “drilling holes in the sky” to the new flight levels—but Boeing’s flight test team has been making an effort to add some levity to the ordeal. The new Boeing 787-800 needed an 18-hour test flight as part of its ETOPS certification, […]

In an effort to cut some cost off the next presidential transport, the Air Force is reportedly in talks with Boeing to buy two 747s that had been produced for the now-bankrupt Russian airline, Transaero. The two jumbo jets were ordered by the airline in 2013, but Transaero went bankrupt in 2015, before it could […]

The Perlan II glider reached its own best altitude of 32,500 feet this week as the team plans to soar well past the existing sailplane record of 50,727 feet, set by Einar Enevoldson and Steve Fossett in Perlan I in 2006. To get the pressured, two-seat glider to the target altitude of 90,000 feet, Perlan […]

Flying air taxis from Germany are ready to “conquer the world,” Volocopter announced on Tuesday, thanks to 25 million Euros invested by Daimler and a handful of others. “Using this fresh capital, Volocopter will further expand upon the leading technology in its purely electrically driven VTOLs, speed up the introduction process of the Volocopter serial […]

Boeing has created its own in-house avionics shop, called Boeing Avionics, to develop and produce its own avionics, the Seattle Times reported on Monday. In a memo to employees, Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg said the move is a “strategy to build targeted vertical capability.” Boeing had created its own in-house avionics until 2003, when it […]

NASA plans to fly an F-18 at supersonic speeds above Florida’s coastal waters later this month, producing sonic booms for a test program. The aircraft will fly at or above 32,000 feet when it goes supersonic. The flightpath is designed to keep the strongest-sounding sonic booms away from residential areas, while still producing booms above […]

An Air India flight was diverted last week because the crew didn’t raise the landing gear. There were apparently lots of clues that something was terribly wrong but the A320 crew pressed on, climbing to 24,000 feet instead of the normal 35,000 to 37,000 feet and reaching only 230 knots as the plane gobbled huge […]

AirVenture 2017 hosted possibly the most extravagant flying display ever mounted on Bomber Day. AVweb’s Russ Niles was there and filmed it all. view on YouTube

Airbus is in the electric airplane business for at least the medium term and the next few years could see the first flight of a BAE 146 regional jet converted to fly on electric power. Ken McKenzie, senior VP of strategy and corporate development for Airbus, said what started with a quirky rear-engine ducted fan […]

Blue Origin plans to ferry paying tourists on short trips to space in its Shepard passenger space capsule. What better place than AirVenture at Oshkosh to show off a mock-up of the technology? AVweb interns Baxter Van West and Ashley Anglisano took a tour of the capsule and prepared this video report from the show. […]