Recent Updates

Embraer received type certificates for the updated version of its E195 passenger jet from the FAA, EASA and Brazilian regulatory authority ANAC on Monday. The E195-E2, which has a maximum takeoff weight of 135,585 pounds, is the largest aircraft ever manufactured by Embraer. According to the company, 75% of the aircraft’s systems are new compared […]

I’ve actually never bought a brand-new vehicle and my long-suffering wife will attest to the occasional discomfort and inconvenience that has resulted. Nevertheless, we’ve mostly been able to get where we wanted to go, do what we needed to do and do it safely and mostly reliably without ever having a car payment. Among the […]

The airshow season is about fast-moving, rapidly gyrating aircraft. For some, it’s about witnessing a watchmaker’s level of finesse required to land on a dime and stop in one fuselage length. That’s the audience for the new Sod Buster STOL Competition (Facebook link), to be launched this August at the Milaca, Minn., airport (18Y). Starting […]

SpaceX’s first successful commercial mission came off almost without a hitch last week. Almost. Despite landing safely on a drone ship off the Florida coast, one of the three boosters was lost before it could return to dry land. By design, the two outboard boosters returned safely to land, while the larger, center booster successfully […]

Details surrounding the crash on April 9 of a Japanese Air Self-Defense Force F-35A have been slow to emerge as a highly coordinated Japanese and American military rescue mission continues. Pieces of the aircraft have been located, but neither the pilot nor major portions of the Lockheed Martin fighter haven been found. The Nikkei Asian […]

American Airlines announced over the weekend that it was extending the cancellation of flights slated to use the Boeing 737 MAX until Aug. 19. This move follows reports that indicate more international aviation authorities around the world are planning to carefully scrutinize any updates to the jet’s MCAS stability-augmentation software before permitting revenue flights to […]

By about the fifth day of the big U.S. air/trade shows—AirVenture and Sun ‘n Fun—a certain hollow-eyed exhaustion sets in. Vendors at the show can be heard to wonder if the thing will ever end and for us pixel-addled wretches covering the spectacle, we feel as run down as the batteries in our cameras and […]

The world’s largest airplane took its first flight early Saturday. The Stratolaunch, a six-engine, twin-fuselage behemoth with a 385-foot wingspan, took off from Mojave after years in development. The aircraft was conceived by Paul Allen and Scaled Composites founder Burt Rutan as an aerial launch platform for low Earth orbit satellites that will reduce launch […]

This week, AVweb’s news roundup uncovered reports on a message from the National Agricultural Aviation Association to drone operators, a training infrastructure expansion for Lufthansa Aviation Training, a new partnership for The DAES Group, an upcoming flight simulation expo and a convention attendance announcement from Click Aviation Network. As the growing season gets underway, the […]

Boeing 737 MAX Accidents Another facet of this preliminary report that the media is missing – and I don’t fault most them as they are often not aviation experts nor qualified B737 pilots – is that from the moment the aircraft lifted off it had an unreliable airspeed emergency. Disparity between the Captain and FO […]