Recent Updates

The Perlan II glider reached its own best altitude of 32,500 feet this week as the team plans to soar well past the existing sailplane record of 50,727 feet, set by Einar Enevoldson and Steve Fossett in Perlan I in 2006. To get the pressured, two-seat glider to the target altitude of 90,000 feet, Perlan […]

Flying air taxis from Germany are ready to “conquer the world,” Volocopter announced on Tuesday, thanks to 25 million Euros invested by Daimler and a handful of others. “Using this fresh capital, Volocopter will further expand upon the leading technology in its purely electrically driven VTOLs, speed up the introduction process of the Volocopter serial […]

Boeing has created its own in-house avionics shop, called Boeing Avionics, to develop and produce its own avionics, the Seattle Times reported on Monday. In a memo to employees, Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg said the move is a “strategy to build targeted vertical capability.” Boeing had created its own in-house avionics until 2003, when it […]

NASA plans to fly an F-18 at supersonic speeds above Florida’s coastal waters later this month, producing sonic booms for a test program. The aircraft will fly at or above 32,000 feet when it goes supersonic. The flightpath is designed to keep the strongest-sounding sonic booms away from residential areas, while still producing booms above […]

An Air India flight was diverted last week because the crew didn’t raise the landing gear. There were apparently lots of clues that something was terribly wrong but the A320 crew pressed on, climbing to 24,000 feet instead of the normal 35,000 to 37,000 feet and reaching only 230 knots as the plane gobbled huge […]

AirVenture 2017 hosted possibly the most extravagant flying display ever mounted on Bomber Day. AVweb’s Russ Niles was there and filmed it all. view on YouTube

Airbus is in the electric airplane business for at least the medium term and the next few years could see the first flight of a BAE 146 regional jet converted to fly on electric power. Ken McKenzie, senior VP of strategy and corporate development for Airbus, said what started with a quirky rear-engine ducted fan […]

Blue Origin plans to ferry paying tourists on short trips to space in its Shepard passenger space capsule. What better place than AirVenture at Oshkosh to show off a mock-up of the technology? AVweb interns Baxter Van West and Ashley Anglisano took a tour of the capsule and prepared this video report from the show. […]

Airbus believes electric aircraft, including airliners, are the future and it’s taking a leadership role in their development. Ken McKenzie, the company’s senior VP of strategy and corporate development, discussed what that future might look at in an interview at AirVenture 2017. Duration: 6:20 File Size: 6.3 MB download here

Mooney’s Chino, California-based design center, which did much of the work on the emerging M10 line, will move its operations to the Kerrville, Texas, factory headquarters. “We’re going to be consolidating efforts,” says Mooney’s Lance Phillips. The Chino facility was responsible for the design and development work on the M10 models, a product line that […]