Recent Updates

A crowd-funded campaign for the not-for-profit Perlan Project aims to raise more than $2 million to build the Perlan II sailplane and send it to a near-space altitude of more than 90,000 feet. The project hopes to use stratospheric mountain waves and the polar vortex to reach the target altitudes and to collect atmospheric data […]

Three of the four surviving members of the 80 crew members whose 1942 attack on Japan made them Doolittles Raiders met for the last time publicly at the National Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio, last Veterans Day weekend. The men held a pact that the last survivor among them would open a 1896 vintage […]

That faint humming sound you hear is the media-industrial complex gearing up for the first commercial space tourism flights, which Virgin Galactic seems likely to pull off next year, if not sooner. On NBC news Friday, I saw an advance story on Virgin Galactic with an interview with Richard Branson. Its pre-promo; NBC has signed […]

An Air Force mission will on November 19 deliver into orbit a small satellite, dubbed TJCubeSat, which will be the first orbiting satellite designed and built by high school students. The launch will take place at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport operated at NASAs Wallops Flight Facility in eastern Virginia. Students from the Thomas Jefferson High […]

A handy app for those in the market for a helicopter has been released by a Russian publisher. Upcast has released Helibook, which is the third of its publications and provides interactive comparison data on 35 private, corporate and VIP helicopters, “starting from the tiny Robinson R22 and going up to the massive Mil Mi-38.” […]

Gulfstream has taken extraordinary measures to prevent speculation in the market for its flagship G650 long-range big cabin business jet. As we reported in October, an early position holder of the $65 million aircraft, Formula One luminary Bernie Ecclestone, sold his almost-new G650 at a $7 million premium to the owner of a soccer team. […]

A Reaper attack and surveillance drone has gone down in Lake Ontario during a training mission about 1 p.m. local time. The Reaper belonged to the Syracuse, New York-based 174th Attack Wing of the Air National Guard, which trains Air Force pilots to fly them all over the world. The flight originated at Fort Drum […]

AMR Corp. — the parent company of American and American Eagle airlines — and US Airways Group reached a settlement on Tuesday with the U.S. Department of Justice, which will enable them to merge and create the world’s largest airline. The proposed deal, which still must be OK’d by a federal court before it can […]

This weeks news that the Department of Justice has settled its opposition to a merger of American Airlines and USAirways raises some unanswerable questions but one certainty: The U.S. now has only three major carriers, Delta, United and the new American, once the merger is finalized. The USAirways name will be absorbed and will eventually […]

The Chinese military has offered a glimpse of its new airborne warning and control system (AWACS) aircraft. The KJ-500 is an adaptation of the Shanxi Y-9 cargo plane, a four-engine turboprop with a configuration similar to that of the C-130 Hercules. The speculation in the Chinese media is that the KJ-500 is the next generation […]