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Germany aviation news

MVP Aero Prototype To Be Tested in Maine

MVP Aero, a would-be maker of an amphibious, folding-wing airplane designed to convert to a fishing boat or mobile camper, says flight testing of the ambitious design will take place in Maine at a former Navy base. The company will be a tenant at TechPlace, a business incubator at the former Navy base near the Androscoggin River and Casco Bay, where it will begin flying a prototype 18 months to...

Lufthansa Aerial Services division inks deal with drone-maker DJI

Lufthansa Aerial Services, a division of Lufthansa Consulting, today signed a deal with DJI to use the world’s leading drone-maker’s aerial platforms to develop commercial applications for its key customers. Using DJI’s drones and open onboard systems, Lufthansa will integrate hardware and software, manage operation of the technology and facilitate data analysis. The tw...

Global air ambulance demand spurs profits at FAI

Soaring global demand for air ambulance services in 2015 helped German business aircraft services provider FAI rent-a-jet to record profitability. The Nuremberg-based company – one of Europe’s largest business aircraft operators – saw revenues climb nearly 9% to €80 million ($87 million) last year. Air ambulance services accounted for €41.7 million – up fro...

Incredible computer-controlled drone lands on moving car

The German Aerospace Centre (DLR) has developed a computer-controlled drone that can land automatically, even on a moving target. In a video posted by the DLR on YouTube, an unmanned aerial vehicle tracks a specially-kitted out Audi with a net on top to catch it.  With a barcode like the one you would find on a magazine - along with other trackers on top of the car - the drone tracked t...

Germany still pushing multinational NH90 medevac fleet

Germany is continuing to promote the creation of a multinational pool of up to 20 NH90 rotorcraft to be used for combat medevac missions. It first floated the idea in late 2014 amid contract revision talks with the NH Industries consortium which resulted in it retaining 20 options for the troop transport helicopter. Maj Gen Thomas Marlow, commander of the German army’s rapid forces div...

Photographer Snaps Once-in-a-Lifetime Picture of Plane Mid-Flight

German photographer Birk Mobius couldn’t have known back in 2014, as he pointed his camera around the small aerodrome he was visiting, that he was about to capture an extraordinary, once-in-a-lifetime moment. As he casually snapped some pictures of a Boeing 777 cargo plane on a tumultuous 30-minute flight from Frankfurt to Leipzig, the stormy weather positioned the airplane’s path s...

Lufthansa digitizes inflight newspapers and magazine

Lufthansa will soon be offering its inflight guests a much wider range of German-language and international newspapers and magazines. The substantial expansion of the present offer of reading material on board has been made possible by the media’s increasing use of electronic publishing channels. Today’s smartphone users in Germany spend an average of two-and-a-half hours a day on t...

German court allows Etihad to continue most airberlin codeshares

An appeals court in Germany on Thursday allowed Etihad to continue most of its disputed codeshare flights with airberlin for the winter schedule ending in March, handing the Abu Dhabi-based airline a partial victory. The court ruled that Etihad should be allowed to continue its codeshare agreement for 26 international routes but rejected its request to continue codesharing on five domestic Germ...

Lufthansa Group achieves record number of passengers in 2015

The airlines of the Lufthansa Group transported 107.7 million passengers in 2015, which is a new record. The Group carried 1.6 per cent more passengers than in the previous year. At the same time the company carried out more than one million flights and achieved the highest ever seat load factor of 80.4 per cent. This corresponds to an increase in capacity utilization of 0.3 percentage points comp...

Lufthansa May Make More Money in 2016, Thanks to Cheap Fuel

Deutsche Lufthansa AG is forecasting that operating profit will rise in 2016 as fuel costs decline a fourth consecutive year. Adjusted earnings before interest and taxes will exceed the 2015 range of 1.75 billion euros ($1.9 billion) and 1.95 billion euros, the Cologne, Germany-based airline said in a presentation for investors published on Friday. While a predicted 20 percent drop in the pr...

Lufthansa Technik delivers second VVIP Boeing 747-8

The Lufthansa Technik completion center has finished the VVIP cabin conversion of the second Boeing 747-8 in Hamburg. The aircraft has now been delivered to an undisclosed customer. Another aircraft of this type is currently undergoing completion. In the past the company equipped fourteen aircraft of the predecessors to the current Boeing 747-8 and is the leading provider for this aircraft type...

West Atlantic Statement on CRJ-200 SE-DUX Accident

Following the accident involving the aircraft SE-DUX West Atlantic Sweden AB will hold a press conference at 11:00 a.m. at Best Western Tidbloms Hotel with address Olskroksgatan 23, SE 416-66 Gothenburg. The aircraft departed Oslo on route to Tromsö and declared mayday at 1:31 p.m. whereby the Swedish and Norwegian search and rescue teams were notified. The crash site was located at 3...