Recent Updates

Most aerial firefighting aircraft are relics of the 1950s and 1960s, but Canadian air tanker modification company Conair is adapting a 21st century design to firefighting work. AVweb’s Russ Niles got a tour of the Avro RJ85 at Conair’s Abbotsford, British Columbia headquarters. view on YouTube

During the six hours that elapsed between the time I decided to write this blog and my actually pushing the button to publish it, 16 people were killed in fatal auto accidents in the U.S. None were killed by drones, nor probably even nicked. How do I know about the car wrecks? I don’t. I […]

A team of students and their professor from a Brazilian university say they’ve set five new records for an aircraft powered by a four-cylinder engine. Anequim (Portuguese for Mako shark) went 323 mph over a 3-kilometer course. That’s 33 mph faster than Jon Sharp’s Nemesis, the current record holder, which was the undisputed champion in […]

A teacher in New York City was arrested Friday on charges of flying a drone in Louis Armstrong Stadium the evening before during a U.S. Open tennis match. The drone crashed into empty seats, and no one was injured, The Associated Press reported. Daniel Verley, 26, faces charges of reckless endangerment and operating a drone […]

Although it hasn’t been officially confirmed, last week’s reported collision between a drone and a Piper PA-23 was, in fact, a bird strike. Residue on the aircraft’s de-icing boot was analyzed by the Smithsonian Institution and found to contain the remains of a small, non-predatory bird, sources familiar with the investigation told AVweb on Friday. […]

Houston was only an hour behind us, but the weather was turning out much worse than forecast. The ceilings were steadily lowering and the METAR updates said the few airports along our route were going from marginal to worse. A pop-up IFR clearance would have been great, but there was a little problem: the airplane […]

AVweb’s search of aviation news this week found award announcements from the Aero Club of Northern California and the National Aviation Hall of Fame, a new mobile job-search app from AviationCV.com, and a milestone for Van’s Aircraft RV kits. Alan Eustace, who set the world record for the highest-altitude free fall jump in October 2014, […]

The FAA on Wednesday updated its 34-year-old Advisory Circular on personal model aircraft, issuing safety and airspace rules similar to the ones it has issued on consumer drones. The new version, which triples the length of the original 1981 AC(PDF) to three pages from one, limits model aircraft to 55 pounds unless certified by a […]

Researchers from NASA have been experimenting with a 150-year-old photography technique that captures dramatic images of the shock waves created when airplanes fly at supersonic speeds. The images, which NASA posted online last week, reveal the effect of supersonic flight on the air-density gradient. Simple equipment is used to capture the images, which then are […]

NBAA this week filed its formal response to a recent announcement from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that it wants to regulate carbon emissions from airplanes. NBAA said it is not opposed to new regulations, but wants them to be standardized across the globe. The International Civil Aviation Organization already is working to develop a […]