Recent Updates

Boeing unveiled its new military single-engine T-X airplane on Wednesday, the latest contender in the contest to supply the Air Force with its next-generation pilot trainer. Boeing has two production T-X aircraft it designed and built with Sweden’s Saab as demonstration models, featuring a twin-tail design and modern avionics made to replace the Air Force’s […]

The Antonov-225, a classic six-engine cargo carrier that is the world’s largest airplane, might be going back into production via a joint China-Ukraine program, but recent reports cast doubt on the timing and viability of the plans. A couple of weeks ago, representatives of the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AICC) and the Antonov Corporation, […]

Every once in a while, it’s fun to cast off the wispy tendrils connecting sanity to what passes for reality these days and consider a real crack pipe concept: What if Elon Musk made airplanes? This occurred to me this week when the news broke that tech billionaire Jeff Bezos plans to build a giant […]

Nobody was seriously hurt when a Delta MD-88 ran off a runway at New York’s La Guardia Airport, in March 2015, but the NTSB said this week the crew made some mistakes in dealing with the situation. The flight crew’s decision to land on the snow-covered runway was “not inappropriate,” the safety board said, and […]

Pilots are not allowed to fly commercially in the U.S. if they have insulin-dependent diabetes, but a recent 18-month study of insulin-dependent commercial pilots flying in the United Kingdom found that no incidents were reported of pilot incapacitation due to blood sugar that was too high or too low. The study, conducted by the U.K. […]

The engine that came apart at altitude on a Southwest B737 last month lost one of its fan blades during the flight, the NTSB reported in an investigative update on Monday. The jet was en route from New Orleans to Orlando, Florida, when the incident occurred, and the crew diverted to Pensacola. They landed safely […]

Blue Origin, the aerospace company founded by tech billionaire Jeff Bezos, announced Monday a new family of heavy boosters capable of putting manned and heavy cargo payloads into earth orbit and beyond. Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, said there will be both two- and three-stage versions of the booster and that one version will be capable of […]

Investigators looking for the final resting place of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 have spent more than $150 million using the latest sensing and navigation technology without result and now they’re hoping to try a high-tech version of a message in a bottle. Australian scientists have built six replicas of the flaperon from the Boeing 777 […]

Try this thought experiment: Before USAir 1549 splashed down in the Hudson, if you put 10 airline crews in a simulator and ran the same scenario, how many would achieve results identical to the real event? Hold that thought for a moment, I’ll get back to it. Of course, you can’t unknow the details of […]

Virgin Galactic’s new SpaceShipTwo, VSS Unity, flew a first trial Thursday as the company continues to develop the newest version of its space-tourism vehicle. Virgin Galactic called the test, which lasted 3 hours and 43 minutes, a “captive carry” trial, during which the WhiteKnightTwo aircraft carried the space vehicle throughout the flight to monitor performance. […]