Business & Military

Japan is studying whether to go it alone on building its next generation of fighter aircraft. Japan’s ministry of defense has been working on the Advanced Technology Demonstrator (ATD-X) for four years and it’s scheduled to fly in January. Nikkei Asian Review says the ministry is asking the government for $384 million to fund a […]

Just a year and a half after first flight of the prototype SAM aircraft, President Thierry Zibi has put the company up for sale. Why, after so much work – design, fixturing, successful flight test, certification and orders – would that be a good time to sell the company? Zibi says, “I came to the […]

AVweb’s weekly review of developments in aviation revealed news that Cessna delivered its 10,000th single-engine airplane from its Independence, Kansas, facility, Bell Helicopter broke ground on a new manufacturing facility, Cutter Aviation received a safety award, and the FAA authorized transition training in Bearhawk amateur-built aircraft. Textron Aviation Inc. announced that Cessna Aircraft Company delivered […]

Orders for long-lasting U.S. manufactured goods posted their biggest gain on record in July on strong overseas demand for aircraft, and the underlying trend also remained firm, pointing to brisk economic growth. Transportation orders rose a record 74.2 percent as bookings for civilian aircraft more than tripled. Boeing had said earlier it received a record […]

Airline travel and everything associated with it has a way of bringing out the worst in people. And now that the airlines have reduced seat pitch to that of a Roman slave galley, we’ve entered the era of the cabin brawl. In case you didn’t hear about it, a United flight from Newark to Denver […]

Disney “imagineers” have found some unique uses for unmanned aerial systems (UAS) that could eventually see airborne puppets controlled by drones pulling the strings. The company has filed three patent applications to use the increasingly sophisticated little aircraft to widen its entertainment offerings at its theme parks. A couple of the patents address a proposed […]

A collection of historic aircraft that flew in the 1969 movie “The Battle of Britain” and then sat in storage in a Texas hangar for more than 40 years has been sold for more than 10 million pounds (almost $17 million) to a European dealer, the Sunday Express reported this weekend. The collection includes a […]

Slovenian planemaker Pipistrel says its new electric-powered training aircraft will slash training costs while pleasing the neighbors of the small airports it’s designed for. The WATTsUP two-seat trainer flew for the first time on Aug. 22 and will be unveiled publicly at the Salon de Blois airshow in France Aug. 30-31. “Technologies developed specially for […]

NASA has flown its tilt-rotor hybrid electric concept aircraft and hopes it will result in a practical VTOL unmanned aircraft. Greased Lightning flew for the first time Aug. 19 (tethered) and it represents a new take on an old design first pioneered by Canadair in the 1950s and used by the V-22 Osprey. The wings […]

A SpaceX Falcon 9 reusable rocket was intentionally exploded over the company’s Texas proving grounds on Friday after onboard systems detected an unspecified “anomaly.” The spacecraft disappeared in a fireball shortly after launch.”During the flight, an anomaly was detected in the vehicle and the flight termination system automatically terminated the mission,” the company said in […]