Business & Military

Diamond has flown its DART trainer prototype for the first time. The turboprop tandem-seat aircraft took off Tuesday for its maiden flight and it was good enough for company President Christian Dries to commit to production. “Company Chief Test Pilot Ingmar Mayerbuch and Flight Test Engineer Thomas Wimmer have been so excited about the first […]

The FAA’s comment period is now closed for its proposed changes to Part 23 aircraft certification, and 61 comments have been logged online. The GA industry has been lobbying for the changes for years, in hopes that it will become easier and cheaper to certify new airplanes and bring new technologies to market. But the […]

The FAA said today it has completed tests of new drone-detection technology at John F. Kennedy International Airport, in New York. The tests, which began May 2, studied the effectiveness of a detection system developed by the FBI. Five different rotorcraft and fixed-wing UAS participated in the evaluations, and about 40 separate tests took place, […]

New green technologies developed by NASA and the aviation industry will lead to quieter, cleaner, more efficient and safer aircraft, according to researchers and industry representatives who recently met at NASA’s Langley Research Center, in Hampton, Virginia. The Green Aviation technical meeting drew more than 100 people, who shared their insights and results from research. […]

Puttering slowly across the tarmac, with only two of its four big engines slowly turning, might not seem like much of a feat for a B-29, but for Wichita’s “Doc,” it was a milestone — the low-speed taxi test was the first time in 60 years the airplane moved under its own power. The test […]

Cirrus has flown the first production Vision SF50 jet. Cirrus spokesman Ben Kowalski told the Grand Forks Heraldthe aircraft flew May 5 and performed as expected. “It demonstrated that we have implemented out a repeatable process on our production line and are prepared to begin initial production of the Vision Jet,” Kowalski told the Herald. […]

To remain a general aviation participant in good standing—or hell, just a participant of any standing—requires a certain resilience, an almost alien capacity to slough off disaster and munch gleefully on catastrophe. Rolling with the punches comes to mind, but somehow just doesn’t do justice to the gloom that pervades the aviation economy. Now that […]

Third-class medical reform could get another chance of making it to a congressional vote via a defense funding bill that moved through the Senate’s Armed Services Committee this week. The committee voted 23-3 in favor of the bill, which would authorize $602 billion for the Department of Defense and other national security programs. It includes […]

AVweb’s search of aviation news around the world found announcements from Vector Aerospace, McKinney Air Center,LifeStyle Aviation and Flightglobal. Vector Aerospace Corporation, a global independent provider of aviation maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) services, announced the grand opening of a new engine test cell at its Summerside facility in Prince Edward Island, Canada. It joins […]

Wrapping up a marathon 10 days of travel this week, I was happy to get my mitts on and actually fly a real airplane. Not a drone operated from some air-conditioned trailer a half a world away or something powered by batteries that lack capacity or, more likely, something that exists only in a PowerPoint […]