Business & Military

Airbus is dropping plans to produce the electric E-Fan 2.0 and E-Fan 4.0, planned as two-seat trainer and tour-seat touring aircraft. The company had announced in 2014 that it expected to bring the E-Fan 2.0 to market in 2018 as a joint venture with Daher-Socata, the French airframe maker best known for its TBM turboprops. […]

Boeing’s newest super stretch wide-body, the 787-10, took its first flight this morning from Charleston International Airport (KCHS). The airplane, call sign Boeing One, toured around South Carolina between 15,000 and 20,000 feet for five hours, according to Boeing, testing flap and gear operation, and briefly accelerated as fast at 380 knots. A Lockheed T-33, […]

At Continental’s Mobile, Alabama, HQ this week, the company announced that it’s building a clean-sheet factory on new ground near the existing plant. It plans to install $40 million in new equipment to improve production efficiency. In this long-form podcast, Continental CEO Rhett Ross explains the company’s business plan and marketing philosophy. Duration: 18:31 File […]

A million bucks doesn’t buy what it used to, unless you’re buying five new axis machining cells, in which case it buys a lot more than it ever has. As Continental announces a major new investment in a new factory in Mobile, it will be building what we simply don’t see very often: a new, […]

Blue Origin will be the 2016 winner of the Collier Trophy “for successfully demonstrating rocket booster reusability with the New Shepard human spaceflight vehicle through five successful test flights of a single booster and engine, all of which performed powered vertical landings on Earth.” Although Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) was first to guide a boost […]

Natilus, a small company with just three employees, based in Richmond, California, is working to launch a transoceanic cargo business with airliner-size drones. They are currently building a 30-foot-long prototype that they plan to test this summer, according to their press kit. They then plan to produce a full-scale, 200-foot-long turboprop drone, built of carbon-fiber […]

The FAA banned jets from Florida’s Lantana/Palm Beach County Airport in 1973, but that ban is now lifted, the Palm Beach Post reported on Tuesday. Errol Forman, a retired Eastern Air Lines pilot, had landed his newly acquired 1983 Cessna Citation I/SP jet there in May, and a neighbor reported the violation to authorities. Forman […]

Almost as a condition of entry, people who voluntarily engage in general aviation at any level have to be slightly delusional. It takes a hearty constitution to look at gracefully declining sales numbers and eroding flight activity and think, sure, I’ll just keep on going here. I mean, what the hell? In that context, yesterday’s […]

Continental Motors will build a new plant in Mobile, Alabama, the company announced on Monday. The huge new facility, with 225,000 square feet of space, will house both corporate offices and manufacturing space, replacing 11 buildings currently in use across 44 acres at the Mobile Aeroplex. “The current operation being spread throughout multiple buildings, drives […]

The pilot of a Turbine Otter that crashed in Alaska in 2015, killing all nine aboard, had turned off the terrain awareness and warning system before the aircraft hit the side of a mountain near Ketchikan. The NTSB released the factual docket on the crash of the Promech Air crash, which occurred in marginal VFR […]