Business & Military

Japan’s Mitsubishi Aircraft Corporation has begun “certification flight test activities” for its Mitsubishi Regional Jet (MRJ), according to a company announcement on March 27. Mitsubishi says flight testing is being conducted in Moses Lake, Washington, as well as at Florida’s Eglin Air Force Base for extreme environment certification tests. The company is working concurrently with […]

The NTSB announced on Wednesday that it is investigating an accident involving an American Airlines A321 that hit a runway distance marker during its takeoff roll at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) on April 10, 2019. One of the pilots reported experiencing an uncontrolled 45-degree bank as the aircraft rotated. The uncommanded […]

Embraer received type certificates for the updated version of its E195 passenger jet from the FAA, EASA and Brazilian regulatory authority ANAC on Monday. The E195-E2, which has a maximum takeoff weight of 135,585 pounds, is the largest aircraft ever manufactured by Embraer. According to the company, 75% of the aircraft’s systems are new compared […]

I’ve actually never bought a brand-new vehicle and my long-suffering wife will attest to the occasional discomfort and inconvenience that has resulted. Nevertheless, we’ve mostly been able to get where we wanted to go, do what we needed to do and do it safely and mostly reliably without ever having a car payment. Among the […]

SpaceX’s first successful commercial mission came off almost without a hitch last week. Almost. Despite landing safely on a drone ship off the Florida coast, one of the three boosters was lost before it could return to dry land. By design, the two outboard boosters returned safely to land, while the larger, center booster successfully […]

Details surrounding the crash on April 9 of a Japanese Air Self-Defense Force F-35A have been slow to emerge as a highly coordinated Japanese and American military rescue mission continues. Pieces of the aircraft have been located, but neither the pilot nor major portions of the Lockheed Martin fighter haven been found. The Nikkei Asian […]

American Airlines announced over the weekend that it was extending the cancellation of flights slated to use the Boeing 737 MAX until Aug. 19. This move follows reports that indicate more international aviation authorities around the world are planning to carefully scrutinize any updates to the jet’s MCAS stability-augmentation software before permitting revenue flights to […]

By about the fifth day of the big U.S. air/trade shows—AirVenture and Sun ‘n Fun—a certain hollow-eyed exhaustion sets in. Vendors at the show can be heard to wonder if the thing will ever end and for us pixel-addled wretches covering the spectacle, we feel as run down as the batteries in our cameras and […]

The world’s largest airplane took its first flight early Saturday. The Stratolaunch, a six-engine, twin-fuselage behemoth with a 385-foot wingspan, took off from Mojave after years in development. The aircraft was conceived by Paul Allen and Scaled Composites founder Burt Rutan as an aerial launch platform for low Earth orbit satellites that will reduce launch […]

Multiple investigations into two accidents of Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft will inevitably focus on a much misunderstood FAA program called ODA for organization designation authorization. And Pete Bunce, president of the General Aviation Manufacturers Association, says that may ultimately be a good thing for both the aerospace industry and general aviation manufacturing specifically. We […]