Business & Military

FAA Administrator Michael Huerta said Sunday that rulemaking planned for the end of this year on unmanned aerial systems (UAS) will focus on aircraft certification and “qualifications” of pilots. “I can’t say what is going to be in it but broadly speaking, what we are looking at are all the questions relating to how we […]

Transport Canada has released the details of its new rules governing the commercial use of unmanned aerial systems. As we reported last month, the agency, the equivalent of the FAA, announced a significant liberalization of so-called “low threat” UAS operations. Those were generally described as line-of-sight operations below 300 feet in rural areas away from […]

CNN Money says Lockheed Martin and Boeing are working on a supersonic airliner designed to fly legally over land. The report says the aircraft will carry 88 passengers at Mach 1.6, or about twice as fast as regular jet airliners. That’s a little slower than the Concorde, which last flew a little more than 11 […]

Diamond Aircraft’s first DA42 Twin Star has a new home in Austria’s science and industry museum, theTechnisches Museum Wien in Vienna. The twin-engine diesel airplane had its first flightin December 2002 in Austria with Diamond CEO Christian Dries as test pilot. A year and a half later, the DA42 made the first nonstop Atlantic crossing […]

The president of the world’s second largest AOPA pilots group is retiring sometime in 2015. Kevin Psutka, president of the Canadian Owners and Pilots Association (COPA), will step down as soon as a replacement can be hired, COPA said Thursday. Psutka, a former RCAF navigator and reserve pilot, has been in the job for 18 […]

AVweb’s search of new developments in aviation uncovered the latest test flight of CIrrus Aircraft’s jet, a first flight for Airbus’ latest military helicopter, and acquisitions announced by Continental Motors and Momentum Aviation Holdings. Cirrus announced the successful first flight of their second certification flight test aircraft, C-One (C1), in their Vision SF50 personal jet […]

Video of passengers pushing an airliner where its wheels had frozen to the ground in northern Russia made news around the world this week. The video shows people pushing the Tupolev Tu-134 backwards on a tarmac in Igarka, where it was 61 degrees below zero, the Associated Press reported. The UTair Russian airliner was to […]

Cirrus’s SF50 jet program took a major step forward on Tuesday with the first flight of its second certification flight test aircraft. C1, as it has been dubbed, took off at 3:30 p.m. from Duluth International Airport for a 45-minute flight. Pilot Terry LeSage said it went the way test pilots like test flights to […]

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines took customer service to a new level in recent weeks with a five-day publicity event assisting thousands of travelers around the world. In a video released this month, the airline described the social media-based “#happytohelp” campaign as its way of reaching out to non-KLM customers. “We decided to help out everyone, […]

Continental Motors Group Ltd. has expanded its Alabama-based maintenance and service operations into avionics and aircraft interiors. Continental, a subsidiary of AVIC International Holding Corp. of Beijing, China, announced on Monday it has completed acquisition of Southern Avionics and Communications of Mobile.Southern Avionics is now a division of Continental Motors Services of Fairhope, Alabama, and […]