Recent Updates

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 […]

Recently during the government shutdown, Atlanta Center had a hard time communicating with a Citation who seemed to be out of range. They asked me to call up the Citation and tell him that he needed to go to another frequency. We reached the Citation and relayed the message. We reported this back to the […]

SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket successfully completed its second launch and first operational mission on Thursday. After a 24-hour delay due to weather, the rocket launched from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at 6:35 p.m. local time. The Falcon Heavy’s payload was the Arabsat-6A, a telecommunications satellite that will deliver television, radio, internet […]

Multiple investigations into two accidents of Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft will inevitably focus on a much misunderstood FAA program called ODA for organization designation authorization. And Pete Bunce, president of the General Aviation Manufacturers Association, says that may ultimately be a good thing for both the aerospace industry and general aviation manufacturing specifically. We […]

With the current EPA administration seen as unlikely to issue a finding of endangerment against the tetraethyl lead used in aviation fuel, its eventual demise may have to come at the hands of consumers. That was one message from a 100LL briefing held at Aero in Friedrichshafen, Germany, this week. Conducted by Shell’s Tim Shea […]