Recent Updates

Air France pilots ended a two-week strike Sunday but did so without resolving its fight with the company. The SNPL, Air France’s main pilots union, simply gave up and flights are expected to resume in a couple of days. The pilots walked out to pressure the airline into covering pilots of its new budget carrier […]

Last week, when I was being shown around Embraer’s new U.S.-assembled A-29 Super Tucano with a group of journalists, the first thing that caught my eye was a big covered something sticking out of each wing. In an age of remote control drones and smart bombs, that couldn’t possibly be a machine gun, could it? […]

Airbus celebrated the first flight of its new A320neo Thursday at its facility in Toulouse, France. Powered by a pair of Pratt & Whitney PurePower PW1100G-JM engines, the aircraft flew for 2.5 hours performing initial system checks and began the process of expanding the flight and performance envelope, reaching a maximum altitude of 26,500 feet. […]

AVweb’s weekly search of the latest developments in aviation uncovered news of the all-electric Sun Flyer’s flight tests, Sporty’s new ATP training course, two new vice presidents at Cirrus and a free trial of Aspen Avionics’s synthetic vision product.SunAero Electric Aircraft Corp. has entered the next phase of development for its high tech solar-electric training […]

Brazilian aircraft giant Embraer and its U.S. partner, Sierra Nevada Corp., rolled out the first the A-29 Super Tucano for the U.S. Air Force in Jacksonville, Florida, on Thursday. (See the video here.) The aircraft is the first of 20 purchased by the Air Force for deployment in Afghanistan where they will serve as trainers […]

At Jacksonville, Florida, this week, Sierra Nevada and Embraer took the wraps off the first A29 Tucano to be made in the U.S. It’s the first of 20 airplanes on their way to Afghanistan for that country’s rebuilding air force. view on YouTube

As we reported Tuesday, the FAA has taken the first steps to allow commercial use of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) in what it referred to as the National Airspace System by granting limited exemptions from the Federal Aviation Regulations to six aerial photo and video production companies to use UAS below 400 feet AGL on […]

It might seem after more than 100 years, we’ve figured out the best ways to fly, but creative folks insist on continuing to try new technologies. One young inventor, Aaron Wypyszynski, of Meridianville, Alabama, is working on a “wingboard” that enthusiasts could ride, like a kind of waterski, in the wake of an airplane. “It […]

The oft-maligned but remarkably capable Lockheed Martin F-22A Raptor entered combat for the first time this week when an undisclosed number were used in airstrikes against Islamic State strongholds and facilities in Syria. According to a report in the Los Angeles Times, the aircraft dropped GPS-guided bombs on an array of targets, including a building […]

I suspect if you could somehow get a full overview of the number and type of unmanned aircraft in use today and the companies involved in their manufacture, the response would be: Wow, I never imagined. I am constantly running into people in the aviation business who are directly or indirectly involved in UAS projects. […]