Recent Updates

Witnesses who saw the crash of a B-1B Lancer Cold War-era swing-wing bomber in southeastern Montana Monday say it broke up in flight, RapidCityJournal.com reported Wednesday, but those accounts remain officially unconfirmed. Early reports are often unreliable; these state that witnesses described the jet coming apart and scattering debris across several miles. The bomber was […]

The FAA this week published its “final policy” regarding the procedures for aircraft owners and operators to ask the FAA to limit the dissemination of their Aircraft Situation Display to Industry data. This data can be used to show an aircraft’s track in real time on websites such as FlightAware. NBAA had raised objections to […]

The 10-story “Grasshopper” rocket created by SpaceX was successfully flown to hover on August 13, and then returned to land on its launch platform after executing a lateral maneuver, the company said Wednesday. The test carried the rocket to an altitude of 250 meters and incorporated a lateral shift of 100 meters. The Grasshopper rocket […]

Researchers at MIT say they have created a new structure that is “10 times stiffer” than existing ultralight materials, can be easily disassembled and reassembled for maintenance or repair, and is “useful for anything you need to move or put in the air or in space.” The research team says the structure is made by […]

Brent Owens is a professional pilot, RV-8 builder, and former (and current) AVweb podcast subject who has recently found the attention of aviation publications for his written articles and his latest endeavor — a blog dedicated to money-saving tips for pilots. The website, FixedWingBuddha.com, is a collection of articles that detail methods that can help […]

The presidential helicopter group, Marine Helicopter Squadron One, Saturday debuted its new MV-22 Ospreys, and will receive a total of 12 of the tilt-rotor aircraft, none of which will be used to move the president, and all of which cost more than $10,000 per hour to operate, according to the GAO. The aircraft were used […]

Wesley David Archer in the 1930s produced pictures of WWI aircraft engaged in aerial combat that became a popular sensation in their day, but decades later were discovered to be falsified, and Wednesday in Australia they went up for auction. In 1933, the photos gained publicity through their use in the book Death In The […]

Although the pilot job market has been going through some changes in recent years, experienced pilots remain in demand. Flexjet says it’s looking for a few good pilots to accommodate the continued growth of its fractional and jet card business. Since Flexjet is a subsidiary of Bombardier and only flies its most modern aircraft, the […]

The U.S. Department of Justice filed a civil antitrust lawsuit on Tuesday to challenge the proposed $11 billion merger between US Airways and American Airlines. The suit claims the merger, which would result in the creation of the worlds largest airline, would substantially lessen competition for commercial air travel in the U.S. and would result […]

Sikorsky hopes its newly unveiled Matrix technology suite can bring higher autonomy to unmanned aviation missions, actively guiding aircraft through dynamically evolving situations that could be dangerous for pilots or impossible for a normal UAV to negotiate. The company describes Matrix as advanced algorithms that collect situational data and effectively make decisions, literally on the […]