Recent Updates

For those who thought Amazon.com was not serious about its plans to deliver packages with Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), its petition to the FAA for an exemption to test them outdoors near Seattle, Washington, has been pending since July 9. With the FAA’s recent approval of some petitions for exemption for UAS in the movie […]

AVweb’s weekly search of the news in the world of aviation turned up a new exhibit exploring the future of space travel, a major award for Civil Air Patrol, a partnership to support the Unmanned Aircraft System Community and approval of a new flight simulator for the Socata TBM-series aircraft. Space Center Houston’s newest exhibit, […]

The 52nd Annual National Aviation Hall of Fame (NAHF) Enshrinement Dinner and Ceremony will take place this Saturday, Oct. 4 at the NAHF Learning Center and the adjacent National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio. The six new enshrines to the NAHF as well as the A. Scott Crossfield Aerospace Educator […]

The FAA issued an airworthiness directive on Wednesday that requires the operators of 1,300 Boeing 737 and 777 jets to replace certain Honeywell avionics display units at a total cost of about $14 million. The units are susceptible to interference from some WiFi devices, the FAA said. “We are issuing this AD to prevent loss […]

Geraldine “Jerrie” Mock, the Ohio aeronautical engineer, adventurer, pilot and media-described housewife who became the first female pilot to fly solo around the world, died Tuesday. Mock was at her home in Quincy, Florida, and died in her sleep. An experienced pilot, she completed the record-setting solo flight on April 17, 1964, in her single-engine […]

Sierra Nevada Corporation has unveiled a smaller version of its Dream Chaser space plane designed to be launched to low earth airport by Paul Allen and Burt Rutan’s Stratolaunch system. The scaled version of Dream Chaser will carry three astronauts or it can be flown as a space UAS carrying cargo only. The Stratolaunch vehicle […]

The standards organization ASTM says both the European Commission and European Aviation Safety Agency have endorsed a “global initiative to modernize the way smaller airplanes are certified.” ASTM says the CS23/Part 23 Reorganization is a blueprint for the world’s aviation authorities to bring their certification standards up to date and it was unveiled at meeting […]

The Airbus A350-900 XWB, which has been in the works for about eight years, was certified by EASA on Tuesday. FAA certification will follow soon, Airbus said. The “extra-wide-body” model can carry up to 440 passengers and eight cabin crew. “The A350 XWB embodies many extra innovative technologies which make all the difference in passenger […]

After watching FAA administrator Michael Huerta interviewed on network news last night, I felt so much better. For all the administrators I’ve covered in some way, and that’s about nine, he is absolutely the most skilled at giving polished, content-free answers and he doles these out not just to us ink-stained wretches in the GA […]

The global parcel-delivery company DHL has received authorization to start regular drone delivery flights to an island in the North Sea about 7.5 miles off the coast of Germany. “This research project represents the first and only time in Europe that a flight by an unmanned aircraft will be operated outside of the pilot’s field […]