Business & Military

Airbus has been granted a U.S. patent for an airplane that could fly commercial passengers at speeds up to Mach 4.5, according to various news reports this week. The plans show the hydrogen-fueled airplane would take off vertically, propelled by turbojets, then a rocket engine and wing-mounted ramjets would propel the aircraft as high as […]

Beacon, a new venture launched by the team behind Surf Air, plans to start offering a subscription-based private airplane service in the Northeast starting September 15, the company has announced. Beacon will offer unlimited access to its fleet for prices starting at $2,000 per month, with flights between Boston and New York, as well as […]

Textron Aviation has “been listening to the market” and sees an opportunity to introduce a new single-engine turboprop, the company confirmed in an email to AVweb on Monday. “This is an entirely new, clean-sheet design aircraft — not a derivative or variant of any existing product,” the company said. The company is not yet releasing […]

During the annual EAA Legal Advisory Council Board Meeting on July 24, 2015, our special guest Reggie Govan, the recently installed FAA Chief Counsel laid out several changes underway at the FAA. First, enforcement (administrative and/or legal action brought against certificate holders for alleged regulatory violations) will no longer be conducted through the nine FAA […]

General aviation airplane shipments fell 9.1 percent in the first half of this year compared to last year, the General Aviation Manufacturers Association reported Friday. GA rotorcraft shipments also dropped this year so far, with 447 delivered, down from 502 in the first half of 2014. Piston airplane deliveries rose between the first quarter and […]

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg announced Thursday his social networking company just finished building an unmanned aerial system that can “beam down Internet connectivity from the sky.”It’s called Aquila, and demonstrates not only solar-powered flight, but a new way to connect to the Internet.The project is part of Internet.org, whose mission is to get the Web to […]

An airspace system for unmanned aerial vehicles – perhaps with flight plans and air traffic control – is the topic at a symposium this week hosted by NASA. The agency and the Silicon Valley chapter of the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International metwith interested businesses at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. […]

AVweb’s search of aviation news around the world found a new fire-containment product for air crews, a UAV safety campaign from the agricultural aviation industry, a new executive announced by Skanska USA, and a university scholarship for the 2015-2016 school year.Innovint Aircraft Interior GmbH, based in Hamburg, Germany, has developed the PED Containment Bag (CB) […]

I have argued many times in the past that in order for commercial space operations to succeed, they need to be given the opportunity to fail. The truth is, aviation did not grow up in a bloodless environment. Many died learning the lessons that we take for granted today. Commercial spaceflight may indeed have to […]

Lockheed Martin Flight Services is stepping up UAS awareness with its recently introduced unmanned traffic management (UTM) service. Aimed at increasing situational awareness when it comes to sharing the airspace with commercial drone operations, UTM includes an evolving set of functions and services — including a simplified and automated UAS NOTAM filing process, online graphics […]