Recent Updates

The restoration team working on the B-29 Superfortress “Doc” will go on live webcam Friday morning for the first engine startups. The event will start at 8 a.m. CT in Wichita, where Doc is undergoing work at its hangar. Tom Bertels, a Doc’s Friends board member, told AVweb in an email Thursday the team wants […]

AVweb’s search of aviation news turned up several items in the world of e-cockpits: A new digital standby instrument from L-3, an upgraded simulation station from one-G, a milestone at PilotAptitudeTest.com, and a new service launched by Fltplan. L-3 Aviation Products introduced its next-generation Electronic Standby Instrument (ESI), the Genesis ESI-500. The standby unit is […]

Beacon flew its first flights on Tuesday for a new all-you-can-fly service. The company charges a monthly fee of $2,000 and offers 18 flights every day between Boston Logan Airport and Westchester Airport in New York. CEO Wade Eyerly says the service will get travelers point-to-point in about two hours, which is about half the […]

Amazon is joining the commercial space race and hopes to launch paying passengers into low earth orbit by the end of the decade. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced Tuesday that his company Blue Origin is taking over Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral and renaming it Exploration Park. “Residents of the Space Coast have enjoyed […]

If you’re a YouTube aviation video junkie, you’ve probably seen this one of what’s called a blade-out test. It’s intended to prove that the containment around a high-bypass turbofan engine can prevent shrapnel from ricocheting outside the engine in the event that the fan loses one or more blades. Or the engine core comes asunder. […]

AVweb’s search of aviation news around the world found an online ground school for gliders, an app for learning aerobatics, a new EVS unit for experimental aircraft, and a new broker business launched by Jet Trader Group.White Oak Communications LLC and Gliderbooks.com are excited to introduce the latest innovation in glider pilot training, Gliderbooks Academy […]

I’ve been watching Diamond’s autonomous and fly-by-wire research for more than three years now, but I was mildly surprised to learn this week how far they’ve come with it. I wasn’t quite expecting the full autonomous flight tests so soon for light GA aircraft. But we’re there. It makes me wonder who else is doing […]

Members of the Senate and the House returned to Washington, D.C., on Tuesday after their August recess, to face an imminent deadline to deal with funding the FAA. The current FAA funding bill expires on Sept. 30. Industry advocates are hoping there won’t be a series of temporary extensions and shutdowns like in 2011, when […]

Diamond Aircraft, flying a DA42 twin, has completed a series of fully autonomous flight tests culminating in several landings without any input from human pilots. The tests used a new fly-by-wire system Diamond has been developing for light aircraft and were completed at Diamond’s Wiener Neustadt headquarters in Austria. The trials may lead to fielding […]

The science team aboard Nautilus, a research vessel operated by the Ocean Exploration Trust, recently explored the wreckage of the USS Macon, an aircraft-carrier dirigible operated by the U.S. Navy that crashed off the coast of California and sank in 1935. The researchers used remotely operated vehicles to explore the remains of the airship and […]