Recent Updates

Hyundai and Uber announced a partnership aimed at developing air taxis for a “future aerial ride share network” at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Monday. As part of the announcement, the companies unveiled the Hyundai S-A1 Personal Air Vehicle (PAV) electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft concept. According to […]

FAA officials will meet with local law enforcement reps from about a dozen counties in northeastern Colorado to discuss unexplained drone activity that has alarmed local residents and public officials. So far, no one has come forward to give even the slightest hint of why the drones, described as being up to eight feet long, […]

With nearly 1200 experimental/amateur-built aircraft newly registered in 2019, the fleet has seen its largest growth in a decade. The 2019 figure is up from 888 the prior year, while last year 916 aircraft were removed or “de-registered,” for a net gain of 270 registrations. All told, the FAA shows 26,842 aircraft registered as experimental/amateur-built; […]

Leonardo Helicopters announced that it successfully completed the first flight of an AW609 tiltrotor prototype “fully representative” of the aircraft’s final production configuration last week. The aircraft is the fourth AW609 prototype and, according to the company, represents the model’s entry into “the final program development and ground/flight testing stages.” The flight took place at […]

Kitmaker Sonex Aircraft has reclaimed ownership of the Sonerai design. Penned by Sonex creator John Monnett in the early 1970s, the Sonerai was developed to compete in Formula Vee racing—and is said to be capable of 170 MPH with a converted Volkswagen four-cylinder engine on the nose. The Sonerai has been supported by SoneraiWorks, but […]

Russian aircraft manufacturer and United Aircraft Corporation branch Irkut continued the flight test campaign for its MC-21-300 airliner with the initial flight of the program’s fourth test aircraft on Wednesday. According to the company, the design of its latest test aircraft took into account test data from the first three MC-21-300 flight test models. The […]

The FAA issued a proposal on Thursday for a rule that would require unmanned aircraft systems (UAS/drones) to be identifiable remotely. The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) suggests tying remote identification requirements to UAS registration and would allow drone identification and location information to be received by “people on the ground and other airspace users.” […]

Textron Aviation announced that it has successfully attached the wings to the fuselage of its first Cessna SkyCourier prototype. According to the company, landing gear and avionics ground testing for the twin-engine utility turboprop are also underway. The first flight of SkyCourier is expected to take place in 2020. “As expected, the operation was sound […]

NASA has announced that its X-59 Quiet SuperSonic Technology (QueSST) aircraft has been cleared for final assembly and systems integration, a move the agency called the “last programmatic hurdle” for QueSST prior to flight signoff. Approval for final assembly of the X-59 was given at a Key Decision Point-D (KDP-D) management review last week. Assembly […]

The grounding of the Boeing 737 MAX has turned a pilot shortage in China into a pilot surplus for those qualified on 737s. A year ago, Chinese airlines were scrambling for pilots to help fuel the rapid growth of the industry in Asia and most of them were pinning that growth on massive orders for […]