Recent Updates

Surf Air, which calls itself an “all-you-can-fly private membership airline,” is expanding its service from its base in Santa Monica, California, to include Carlsbad and Oakland, the company has announced. The added service coincides with the arrival of three new Pilatus PC-12NG aircraft, the first in an order of 65 airplanes to be delivered over […]

The job of aircraft dispatcher may not get much attention, but dispatchers are essential to flight departments around the country, and the FAA has decided it needs to be more vigilant about how they are trained. There are 44 FAA-approved dispatcher certification courses in operation, the FAA said last week, but the FAA has no […]

Friday’s world-record high-altitude skydive by computer scientist Alan Eustace pioneered a new space suit and life support system and the data collected from the jump may inform the design of a six-person capsule now in the works. Eustace, a Google senior executive, established the new record by exiting a balloon at 135,890 feet over Roswell, […]

In January 2012, Bell Canada applied to the FAA for an exemption from the FARs that would allow it to increase the gross weight of its Model 429 by 500 pounds to 7,500 pounds as had been approved in Canada and a number of other countries. The FAA denied the petition in August 2012. Bell […]

In an exclusive, Reuters is reportingthat Lockheed Martin and the Defense Department have inked a $4 billion deal for an eighth series delivery of 43 F-35 single-engine, all-weather, stealth fighters. According to the report, the hard-fought contract will lower the price of the jet by about 3 percent-and it includes aircraft to be built for […]

While the rest of the world, especially Israel and Australia, move rapidly forward with commercial deployment of unmanned aircraft systems, the FAA’s slow formulation of regulations endangers the U.S. ability to compete. That was one observation that came out of an hour-long panel discussion attended by several hundred people at NBAA in Orlando this week. […]

AVweb’s weekly foray into all that is going on in aviation revealed news of EASA certification of a new Airbus helicopter, a free ForeFlight manual, the identity of the keynote speaker at Redbird Migration next week and availability of a free insurance review. The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) certified the new EC135 T3/P3 by […]

UFO reports by airliner crews are nothing new, but a British A320 crew raised eyebrows after saying they had a close encounter with a flying man who swooped past their aircraft without visible means of support on June 13. The UFO has been dubbed the “Superman of Macclesfield” and the UK Airprox Board, which investigates […]

After mostly remaining aloof from the record-setting side of aviation for over 70 years, Cessna appears to have returned to the fray-using the Mach 0.935 cruising speed of its recently certificated Citation X+ to set four city-to-city speed records in its weight class. Over a two-day period, the jet set speed records on four sequential […]

At NBAA, Cessna showed off its new Latitude super-mid-size aircraft. AVweb got a brief tour while covering the show. view on YouTube