Recent Updates

Airbus engineers based in Silicon Valley are working to develop “an autonomous flying vehicle platform,” called Vahana, that could provide transport for both passengers and cargo, the company has announced. Flight tests of the first vehicle prototype are slated for the end of 2017. Ultimately, the system could operate similarly to car-sharing applications, with the […]

In the eight months since the FAA opened its online drone registration system, more than 500,000 hobbyists have signed up, FAA Administrator Michael Huerta said today in Washington, already outnumbering the 320,000 registered manned aircraft. Huerta said the FAA now is taking further steps to ensure the drone industry can continue to grow “at the […]

Lockheed Martin is serious about developing lighter-than-air vehicles, and now it has patented a new “spider” device that solves a maintenance problem for airship operators. Traditionally, teams of workers have been required to manually scan the airship envelope to find and repair tiny holes that couldn’t be found any other way. Now, Lockheed’s engineers have […]

The FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation has awarded to Virgin Galactic the operator license it needs to move forward with taxi and flight tests for SpaceShipTwo, the company announced this week. SpaceShipTwo is the passenger-carrying vehicle that ultimately will be carried to about 50,000 feet by WhiteKnightTwo. From that altitude, SpaceShipTwo will be released […]

When Los Angeles Times reporter Nigel Duara was fishing for a third-day lead on the tragic balloon crash in Texas Monday, the graph practically wrote itself: “The pilot of a hot-air balloon that crashed into a Texas pasture had four convictions for drunken driving on his record, but was not required to submit to the […]

NASA took delivery this week of a Tecnam P2006T, which will undergo transformation into an electric-propulsion testbed called the X-57 Maxwell. The Scalable Convergent Electric Propulsion Technology and Operations Research (SCEPTOR) project, the latest in NASA’s X-plane experiments, seeks to develop technologies to make flying quieter, cheaper and emissions-free. Sean Clarke, one of the leaders […]

China will soon be getting a new general aviation organization to promote industrial expansion in China. At AirVenture last week, Z-Park Sky Innovations General Aviation Alliance told reporters that the organization is aimed at helping expand GA in China, which is expected to total about $150 billion by 2020. The alliance is headquartered in Zhongguancun […]

Although European regulators have steadfastly refused to allow commercial operators for single-engine turboprops, Daher says that will change in about six months. The European Commission has approved a proposal to allow single-engine aircraft like Daher’s TBM to be used in for-hire commercial flight throughout the European Union, Daher said at AirVenture this week. “The committee’s […]

The first-ever fully autonomous commercial drone delivery to a customer’s doorstep was completed last week, with an OK from the FAA, delivering a package of hot and cold snacks from a 7-Eleven in Reno, Nevada, to a nearby family’s backyard. Drone manufacturer Flirtey and the Nevada Institute for Autonomous Systems, a nonprofit group working with […]

The pilot was killed when an F/A-18C fighter jet crashed Thursday night during a training mission in southern California, the Marine Corps has reported. The crash occurred around 10:30 p.m. in the vicinity of the Marine Corps Air-Ground Combat Center near Twentynine Palms, about 140 miles east of Los Angeles. The pilot, whose name has […]