Recent Updates

Drone maker DJI says it will provide ADS-B In as a standard feature on all of its drones weighing a half-pound or more beginning in 2020. Sensitive to public fears about the risk small drones represent to commercial and private aircraft, DJI is trying to get ahead of the curve with de-confliction technology and a […]

The troubled Boeing 737 MAX’s return-to-service date remains unknown but two polls suggest the flying public has a mixed view of booking flights on the airplane. A UBS survey found as few as 3% of passengers say they’d pass on a MAX trip while a Barclay’s Bank survey said 44% of flyers would wait a […]

As part of AVweb’s coverage of the 75th anniversary of the D-Day invasion, we’re sweeping the web for informative videos about the event and the participating aircraft. This video by the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force tells the story of D-Day Doll.

It’s unpronounceable so don’t even try. Palimpsest means something reused or altered but still bears traces of an earlier form.  Commonly applied to ancient manuscripts when Roman publishers were too stingy to buy new parchment and forced authors to write over Cicero’s remainders. Et mortuus est, et nos non petendam (he’s dead and won’t sue […]

It seems likely that Boeing or Airbus will continue to dominate large-airliner design, but not if KLM has anything to do with it. The Dutch national airline announced that it is helping fund the development of the Flying-V, a lifting-body-esque flying wing aircraft designed by Delft University of Technology student Justus Benad. Delft, also known […]

An apparently well-funded Massachusetts startup says it will develop a “flying car” hexacopter powered by a hydrogen fuel cell that will carry five people 400 miles. Alaka’i’s Skai says it picked fuel cells as an energy source because they’re much more energy dense and long-lasting than any batteries developed so far. The effort is backed […]

The combat glider was an integral part of Operation Neptune, the airborne component of Operation Overlord, which celebrates its 75th anniversary this week in Normandy. In this video shot in 2017, AVweb’s Paul Bertorelli explains the critical role gliders played in the Normandy operation.

A young Canadian inventor has come up with what he says is a low-cost flight data recorder for light aircraft that requires no special installation. Ephraim Nowak, 26, says the video-based SkyVU system doesn’t need to be wired into the aircraft’s panel and systems. Instead, it uses 4K video cameras to record gauges on the […]

As Boeing tweaked final development of the 737 MAX, it made the MCAS autotrim system more aggressive and ultimately riskier, according to a new report in The New York Times. Boeing failed to inform even its own test pilots and the FAA about the revisions. MCAS—Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System—was added to the 737 MAX to […]

Reuters is reporting that Stratolaunch Systems, the rocket launch company founded by the late Paul Allen, will be closed after unsuccessful efforts to sell it. Allen, who died at 65 last October, teamed up with Scaled Composites founder Burt Rutan to create the launch system, which was to use a massive six-engine aircraft to carry […]