Business & Military

China’s first indigenous commercial airliner is now in revenue service with domestic budget carrier Chengdu Airlines. The ARJ21 was delivered Sunday. The aircraft is a 90-passenger version of the MD-80, which McDonnell Douglas intended to build in China in the 1990s. The ARJ21 is built by the Commercial Aircraft Corp. of China (COMAC)using tooling left […]

The U.S. Patent Office has accepted Airbus’ design for shipping-container-style loading of passengers on aircraft. The company’s prolific patent department put forth the “aircraft pod concept” in 2013 to pre-load passengers in detachable cabin sections to minimize turnaround time on the ground. It was just accepted by the Patent Office last week. As depicted in […]

An aerospace company’s new study on the hazards of toy drones mixing with manned aircraft concludes that the safety risks are greater that those of bird strikes. The study (PDF) from Aero Kinetics, “The Real Consequences of Flying Toy Drones in the National Airspace System,” concludes that rotorcraft pilots are at the highest risk of […]

The testing of Tecnam’s upcoming P2012 airplane now includes FADEC engines developed by Lycoming. The Italian aircraft manufacturer announced this week it has installed iE2 engines on the test aircraft, which is slated for a first flight in mid-2016. The P2012 Traveller, a twin-engine, 11-seat, fixed-gear airplane, is undergoing tests of the fuselage and wings. […]

AVweb’s search of aviation news around the world found updates from the flight simulation industry, an upcoming business jet conference, and the passing of the founder of Mayo Aviation. FlyRight, a leading provider of King Air pilot training, announced it will add additional space and equipment in 2016. The expansion will include additional classroom and […]

Lockheed Martin has moved a step closer to FAA certification for its hybrid airship design, the company said last week. Lockheed worked with the FAA’s certification office in Seattle for more than a decade to develop a plan to allow a nonrigid hybrid airship to operate as a commercial aircraft, since the FAA had no […]

A Russian Sukhoi Su-24 was shot down Tuesday near the Syrian-Turkish border by air-to-air missiles fired by Turkish F-16 fighter jets, officials said. Various accounts have disputed whether the aircraft was above Syrian or Turkish territory at the time, and a U.S. official, speaking off the record to the Los Angeles Times, said if the […]

Blue Origin, the space company headed by Jeff Bezos, has succeeded where every other effort has failed — on Monday, the company launched its unmanned New Shepard suborbital space vehicle from Texas to 329,839 feet, then the crew capsule separated and landed under a parachute, and the rocket module also made a safe, powered, vertical […]

Ascension Air, which operates a fleet of Cirrus SR22 aircraft from its bases in Atlanta and Fort Lauderdale, now is offering jet cards and time shares for the Eclipse 550 jet. “Our new Eclipse 550 Contrails program will bring personal jet transportation to a growing segment of aviators who want the flexibility and benefits of […]

Francis Gary Powers. I suspect that name lives astride a generational divide. If you were born much after the mid-1950s, it may not resonate at all. If you’re older, it likely has a more visceral connotation and for me, that’s an unhappy stew of cold war terror, shame and embarrassment. That this should be so […]