Recent Updates

Thanks to a big kick from the jet stream, Norwegian Airlines is laying claim to the fastest non-Concorde airline flight between New York and London (Gatwick). The Boeing 787-9 hit a top groundspeed of 674 knots and made it to the airport just south of London in five hours and 13 minutes on Monday, almost […]

The FAA says it’s satisfied by measures undertaken by Transport Canada and Air Canada to address a couple of serious errors by Air Canada crews at San Francisco International Airport in 2017. In July, an Airbus A320 came close to landing on a taxiway occupied by four widebody airliners waiting to take off and in […]

While the National Airspace System remains open and accessible to all aircraft, the government shutdown, which began Saturday morning, could affect thousands of owners, operators and pilots if it persists. Air traffic control and all the associated operations are designated as essential services but most of the FAA’s ground-bound services will be shuttered during the […]

Searchers will return to a remote area of the Rocky Mountains near Revelstoke, British Columbia, after relatives of two people missing in a suspected plane crash found a fuzzy drone photo in which the words “help” or “here” appear to be written in the snow. The photo was taken by a commercial drone whose use […]

As the U.S. girds for another budget showdown that threatens to shut down the government, aviation, deemed an essential service in most respects, will soldier on. The thousands of FAA, DOT and other government workers who keep it going will go through an annoying and deflatingly disrespectful round of claiming retroactive wages and living without […]

Emirates Airlines has extended the production life of the A380 with a firm order for 20 aircraft and an option for 16 more. Airbus had run out of orders for the aircraft and was threatening to end production by 2020 but the new $16 billion order buys it time to sell airlines on the moneymaking […]

Australian lifeguards used a drone to drop a flotation device to some swimmers in trouble and are claiming a world first for the resulting rescue. Two teenage boys got caught in a riptide off Lennox Head in New South Wales and were being pounded by surf a half mile offshore when lifeguards were alerted on […]

Virgin Galactic is ramping up its test-flight program in Mojave, with a goal to bring tourists to space later this year. Late last week, VSS Unity, the passenger-carrying part of Virgin’s space vehicle, completed its seventh glide flight, after a break of several months. During that downtime, Virgin’s engineers worked on testing and analysis, and […]

Not long after a false missile strike alarm rocked Hawaii on Saturday, pilots and controllers at Daniel K. Inouye International Airport at Honolulu had to deal with the closure of one of the main runways because there was a dead body on it. Authorities closed Runway 26L for more than six hours as they gathered […]

The largely hypothetical hypersonic aircraft race appears to have become a lot more real at an academic forum in Florida last week. Boeing showed off a model of what it thinks a Mach 5 aircraft might look like and a Lockheed Martin official may have let it slip that his company has already built one. […]