Business & Military

A $2 million prize from the U.S. Air Force awaits the first American team to successfully develop a small 100-horsepower turboshaft engine. Registration for the Air Force Prizeopened this week. The engine must be rated to 100 horsepower, consume fuel up to 0.55 pounds per horsepower per hour, and generate at least two horsepower per […]

Tecnam is exploring the idea of developing a single-engine turbofan for military training and other markets, the company announced this week. Named the “P Jet,” the concept would feature what the Italian aircraft maker calls a “podded” engine design atop the fuselage for maximum efficiency, safety and easy access. The design also includes two side-by-side […]

AVweb’s search of aviation news around the world found ADS-B upgrades for the Airbus A320, an engine-mount kit from Kaolin Aviation, a UAS research center at Texas A&M, and a call for entries from theNational Aviation Hall of Fame.ACSS, an L-3 & Thales company, announced that its XS-950 Mode S Transponder and T3CASSurveillance System have […]

Privatizing the National Airspace System, which drew criticism from FAA employees when discussed with members of Congress in March, could become a real proposal this year when the FAA’s reauthorization comes before Congress. The Wall Street Journalreported this week that Rep. Bill Shuster, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, is tinkering with legislation […]

Deliveries of general aviation airplanes in the first quarter of this year were down by 15 percent compared to the same period last year, the General Aviation Manufacturers Association reported last week. Helicopter sales fell even more, with a drop of 18 percent. The numbers reflect difficulties with U.S. export rules, according to GAMA. “Our […]

Commercial supersonic flight, alternative fuels and autonomy rank high on NASA’s first 20-year road map of research priorities for aeronautics, released on Monday. The draft plan (PDF) covers 15 fields of research, including space exploration, robotics, nanotechnology and information technology. NASA first issued a research road map in 2012; this is the first update, and […]

Cessna has been working for a while now on offering diesel power for its 172 and 182 single-engine aircraft, with certification of the JT-A variants expected maybe last year, then maybe this year, but this week the company said the certification timeline is “undefined,” at least for the 182, and production on the avgas-powered 182T […]

Pilatus flew its PC-24 twinjetfor the first time, about 10 a.m. Monday morning, from Buochs airport in central Switzerland. The airplane flew for 55 minutes, and the company said “the flight went exactly as planned with no problems whatsoever.” The jet used less than 2,000 feet of runway for takeoff, and climbed to 10,000 feet, […]

United Airlines has defended itself publicly and will likely get the chance to do so in court against allegationsit discriminated against an autistic passenger and her family by ordering them off their flight to Portland May 5. Juliette Forbes, 15, and her mother, brother and father were escorted off the aircraft by police after the […]

CNN has talked the FAA into letting it use a tethered drone to shoot news footage almost wherever it wants, up to an altitude of 400 feet. At the AUVSI show in Atlanta, AVweb got a look at this intriguing machine. view on YouTube