As many as eight airliners were briefly delayed at London’s Heathrow Airport on Friday to isolate and remove passengers who exhibited COVID-19 symptoms. Heathrow and local health officials refused to release details of what local media described as a “lockdown” of the airliners but United Airlines confirmed that its flight from San Francisco was involved […]
Boeing has pushed its estimate for the when regulators will begin to unground of the 737 MAX to mid-2020, according to a statement issued by the company on Tuesday. Boeing had previously announced that it might be able to resume deliveries of the MAX as early as December 2019 with a return to service in […]
Airbus has announced that its Autonomous Taxi, Take-Off and Landing (ATTOL) project has reached a significant milestone with the successful completion of its first fully automatic vision-based takeoff. The system being tested is designed to use image recognition technology installed on the aircraft to navigate and detect obstacles during an autonomous takeoff. The test included […]
David Calhoun officially took over as president and chief executive officer of The Boeing Company on Monday. Calhoun follows Dennis Muilenburg, who stepped down from the CEO position at the end of December amidst ongoing criticism for his handling of the problems surrounding the company’s grounded 737 MAX model. Upon assuming his new role, Calhoun […]
Airbus has announced that it will increase the production rate for its A320 family from four to seven aircraft per month at the company’s Mobile, Alabama, manufacturing facility by the beginning of 2021. To support both the production increase along and continued recruiting efforts for the A220 manufacturing team, Airbus says it will be adding […]
Leonardo Helicopters announced that it successfully completed the first flight of an AW609 tiltrotor prototype “fully representative” of the aircraft’s final production configuration last week. The aircraft is the fourth AW609 prototype and, according to the company, represents the model’s entry into “the final program development and ground/flight testing stages.” The flight took place at […]
Russian aircraft manufacturer and United Aircraft Corporation branch Irkut continued the flight test campaign for its MC-21-300 airliner with the initial flight of the program’s fourth test aircraft on Wednesday. According to the company, the design of its latest test aircraft took into account test data from the first three MC-21-300 flight test models. The […]
Textron Aviation announced that it has successfully attached the wings to the fuselage of its first Cessna SkyCourier prototype. According to the company, landing gear and avionics ground testing for the twin-engine utility turboprop are also underway. The first flight of SkyCourier is expected to take place in 2020. “As expected, the operation was sound […]
NASA has announced that its X-59 Quiet SuperSonic Technology (QueSST) aircraft has been cleared for final assembly and systems integration, a move the agency called the “last programmatic hurdle” for QueSST prior to flight signoff. Approval for final assembly of the X-59 was given at a Key Decision Point-D (KDP-D) management review last week. Assembly […]
The grounding of the Boeing 737 MAX has turned a pilot shortage in China into a pilot surplus for those qualified on 737s. A year ago, Chinese airlines were scrambling for pilots to help fuel the rapid growth of the industry in Asia and most of them were pinning that growth on massive orders for […]
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