Business & Military

An 18.8 million-cubic-foot super-pressure balloon flown remotely by NASA has successfully completed a midlatitude circumnavigation of the Earth, NASA said today. The balloon, carrying a Compton spectrometer and imager payload, achieved the milestone 14 days, 13 hours, and 17 minutes after launching from Wanaka Airport, New Zealand, on Tuesday, May 17. At the moment the […]

Last week, when AVweb Editor-in-Chief Russ Niles phoned me about Icon’s breaking announcement of its retrenchment, he happened to mention he had been reading Walter Isaacson’s bio of Steve Jobs and … “Stop right there,” I said, “I know where you’re going and I already have that blog written.” And so I did, displaced by […]

In case there aren’t enough flying cars in the works, a team of 20 young engineers from Japan’s auto industry now say they plan to have a true flying car ready to launch at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The design, called Skydrive, will be a small single-seat VTOL about the size of a compact car, […]

A U.S. Navy TBM-1C Avenger airplane, which had been missing since July 1944, was found last week about 85 feet deep in the Pacific Ocean, near the island nation of Palau, by Project Recover. The project is a collaborative effort between the Office of Naval Research, several universities and private funders, and is working to […]

The president of the Regional Air Cargo Carriers Association says the escalating pilot shortage could soon be hitting mainstream America where it hurts most. “Millions of Americans are not going to get their online purchases delivered to their front door if the situation does not improve,” RACCA President Stan Bernstein told Global Trademagazine. “Everyone is […]

As he promised in February, Pennsylvania Rep. Bill Shuster appears intent on trying again to convince his fellow lawmakers to privatize air traffic control in the U.S. With just six weeks left in the short-term FAA funding authorization that was approved March 15, Shuster is reportedly gathering support, Washington style, for the privatization plan, which […]

A 56-year-old Florida man been identified as the pilot who died when the P-47 Thunderbolt he was flying went into the Hudson River off Manhattan late Friday. William Gordon was flying the aircraft on a photo flight with two other aircraft promoting the American Airpower Museum’s celebration of the 75th Anniversary of the Thunderbolt, which […]

AVweb‘s review of aviation news around the world found announcements from ACSS, Leonardo-Finmeccanica, Mecaer Aviation Group and Scotland’s Glasgow Prestwick Airport. ACSS, an L-3 and Thales Company, has developed an ADS-B transponder solution for legacy corporate aircraft, the NXT-700. This next-generation Mode S transponder will satisfy the DO-260B mandate for Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) on […]

If there was any surprise in Wednesday’s announcement about production delays for the Icon A5, it’s that the company was so forthright in admitting what many have suspected for months. There’s a reason Icon isn’t delivering and for a company that has been obsessive about its image and marketing with a close-to-the-vest press policy, it […]

Icon Aircraft has pushed back customer deliveries until at least 2017 and has announced a major revision of its controversial purchase agreement. In a conference call held with invited aviation media representatives, CEO Kirk Hawkins cited manufacturing difficulties as the reason for the delivery delays. “We have to slow down so we can go fast,” […]