Business & Military

As an early proponent of drones for television news stories, journalist Miles O’Brien says this technology has fundamentally shifted the way stories can be told. O’Brien is a well-known independent science and technology reporter with stories appearing frequently on PBS. AVweb spoke to O’Brien Tuesday at Xponential 2016, the trade and technology show of the […]

A French Jet Ski racer has claimed a new record for hoverboard endurance with a flight that covered 1.4 miles. Guinness World Records confirmed that Franky Zapata performed the flight in front of its evaluators in Sausset-les-Pins in the South of France. He officially went 2,252 meters to shatter the existing record of 275.9 meters […]

If the lure of adventure and faraway places isn’t enough to attract women to the cockpit, at least one airline is hoping that appealing to their fashion sense will. Qantas Airlines has introduced its newly designed pilot uniforms and for the first time there are designs specifically tailored for women. Oh, they still have to […]

This week, it’s off to the drone aircraft show—AUVSI or the Association of Unmanned Vehicles International. They really need a better name for that. It doesn’t exactly slide off the tongue. The association is calling the show Exponential this year, clearly suggesting they think that’s the growth curve they expect drones will or already are […]

Aviation authorities have grounded Airbus EC225 Super Puma helicopters after the crash of a Canadian aircraft off the coast of Norway Friday. The helicopter, operated by CHC Helicopter, went down a few hundred yards from shore near Bergen. All 11 passengers and two crew died. Witnesses told various news sources that they saw rotor blades […]

The U.S. Air Force is complaining about showboating Russian fighter pilots who have done barrel rolls over its pricey reconnaissance planes twice in the last couple of weeks. The most recent incident was Friday when an SU-27 flew within 25 feet of an RC-135 sensor platform and turned inverted over the top of the converted […]

Avionics sales might have had a slow start to the year with a drop in first-quarter numbers reported, but companies attending this week’s Aircraft Electronics Association show in Orlando have been optimistic about diversifying their offerings of cockpit systems and improvements on existing products. While last year’s wave of new ADS-B products seems to have […]

Delta Air Lines decreed there is a viable competitor to the duopoly of Airbus and Boeing in the single-aisle airliner market with a major deal with Canada’s Bombardier. The airline ordered 75 of Bombardier’s 110-seat CS100 airliners and took options on 50 more with a further option to upgrade those orders to 737-esque CS300s with […]

In the firstand largest demonstration of its kind, staffers from NASA and the FAA last week flew 22 drones simultaneously from six test sites across the country to assess NASA’s drone traffic management system. Operators outside NASA entered flight plans and planned operations from several locations, using various kinds of aircraft and software. The traffic-management […]

A stealth fighter jet called the X-2, which has been in development in Japan since 2009, flew for the first time on Friday, CNN has reported. The jet, built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, is not a production design or prototype, but a technology demonstrator, which is meant as a test bed for future designs. The […]