Business & Military

Canadian GA groups are hoping to head off changes to federal law they say would give the minister of transport unprecedented powers to dictate the operation and development at all the country’s aviation facilities, even the smallest privately owned airstrips. The groups say they were surprised when two short paragraphs showed up in a sweeping […]

Heavier-than-air Vertical Take Off and Landing (VTOL) flight has been around since not long after the Wrights began wowing the world with airplanes. The first (horribly unstable) quadcopters flew in 1907-however, the desire for a device to lift humans straight up into the sky and whisk them elsewhere is probably as old as conscious thought […]

Giant e-tailer Amazon seems to be getting more serious about delivering packages with unmanned aerial systems. This week, the company posted a detailed help-wanted notice seeking an engineer and/or pilot with experience in UAS development and a background in FAA certification projects. Recall that late last year, Amazon unveiled a test project in which small […]

China’s aerospace concern showed off its newest military fighter at Zhuhai’s Airshow, Bloomberg News reported this week. The J-31 fighter, which flew a demonstration at the show, has been compared to the Lockheed Martin F-35 military jet. “It appears to be a fifth-generation fighter and so far of course only the United States has been […]

Continental Motors Group announced Thursday it will offer its CD-100 diesel series for existing light piston airplanes in China. The company has filed for a Chinese STC for the installation of its CD-135 and CD-155 engines in the Cessna 172, Piper PA-28 series and the Diamond DA40. It expects the STC to be granted in […]

A Learjet 60 carrying U2 singer Bono lost a rear cargo door during a flight across Europe early Thursday, resulting in some lost bags, but no injuries, CNNreported.The incident elicited a frenzy of media reports from around the world.Ground crew found the hatch was missing after the jet landed at its destination, Berlin’s Schonefeld Airport. […]

Sixfighter planes that were part of a collection of warbirds sold to a dealer in August will be restored and sold by Boschung Global Ltd. of Switzerland, the company said Thursday. The fighters, a version of German Messerschmitts, operated in World War II and were last flown for the making of the 1969 film “Battle […]

AVweb’s weekly search of the news in the world of aviation turned up some updates in the light airplane sector, as well as an award for Airbus’ electric trainer and a first flight for Bell’s new 505 helicopter. Van’s Aircraft and Dynon have worked to create a dual display option for the popular RV-12 LSA. […]

The space probe Philae made a successful landing on a comet, the European Space Agency announced Wednesday, despite a malfunction in the probe’s anchoring system. After a seven-hour descent to the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, signals indicating that the probe had touched down were relayed via the Rosetta orbiter craft to stations on Earth, including […]

If you follow spaceflight much-and probably even if you don’t-you’ll recall the Mars probe that burned up during orbital insertion a few years ago. Actually, it was the Mars Climate Orbiter and that was 16 years ago, believe it or not. The problem was that instead of the newton-seconds specified in the contract, software writers […]