The flight aims to test how well an aircraft and its crew can fare in conditions similar to those on Mars, with thin atmosphere and cold temperatures. Airbus completed a test flight Saturday of a glider set to eventually travel to the edge of space, in a pioneering step into the stratosphere. The Perlan 2’s flight, from an airstrip in the western US state of Nevada, took place two hour...
A DISUSED BOEING 767 has finally reached its new home in Enniscrone, Co Sligo – after a mammoth effort that lasted until the early hours. The plane, which was making its way from Shannon Airport via barge, was brought ashore last night. Undertaker David McGowan’s plan to make the plane the centrepiece of his transport-themed glamping village in Enniscrone has received a...
An influential UK parliamentary body has backed recommendations that London Heathrow Airport should be the site for much-needed extra runway capacity in South East England. The UK government is once again delaying a decision on where to site the new runway. A two-year investigation by an independent body, the Davies Commission, recommended last year that a third runway at Heathrow was the best...
The Slovak Government Flying Service (SSG, Bratislava) has unveiled its EUR50 million (USD56.1 million) fleet renewal plan with three of its Soviet-era VIP jets to be replaced with more modern, Western-manufactured aircraft. According to the Slovak Ministry of the Interior, the SGFS will replace its two Yak-40s with a pair of Fokker 100s acquired from Austria's MJet Aviation (MJF, Vienn...
Engine failure forced the pilot of an ULM which had just taken off from Colmar - Houssen aerodrome attempting a perilous landing saturday morning shortly before 11 am. The aircraft landed on a plowed field near Saint Hippolyte and flipped. The two passengers were unharmed.
Bristow Caribbean has signed a contract with BHP Billiton in Trinidad and Tobago to operate a Sikorsky S-92 aircraft for the oil and gas industry in the region. The operations have started this week. This is the first time an S-92 is being operated in the Trinidad and Tobago oil and gas market and the first time that Bristow is using an S-92 in the country. A spokeswoman for Bristow Group sa...
China will invest 77 billion yuan ($11.9 billion) this year in building aviation infrastructure, the official Xinhua news agency reported late on Wednesday, citing the country's civil aviation regulator. The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) said the investment, which will focus on airports, will initially lead to 11 key construction projects and 52 aviation-related upgrades to...
Global SuperTanker's converted 747-400 is said to be deployable anywhere in the world within 20 hours. The world’s largest and fastest firefighting airplane, the "Spirit of John Muir", was unveiled at its new base in the US state of Colorado on Thursday (May 5). Launched by Global SuperTanker Services, the plane is said to be able to reach any part of the world in 20 hour...
Washington state legislatures gave Boeing Co. $8.7 billion in tax incentives extensions back in 2013. This was followed by Boeing jobs continuing to decline as the company cut costs and moved jobs out of state, infuriating unions and workers. The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers District 751 (IAM 751), the “touch labor” union in the Seattle area for Boei...
In a nutshell Stretching across the former East Fortune airfield, this feels less like a museum and more like a full day out. The jet black hangar housing Scotland’s supersonic retiree, the G-BOAA Concorde, sticks out like a sore thumb against the rolling fields, but it is home to a real jet-age 1970s experience. Climbing the steps and boarding Concorde still gives a buzz. Kids will make st...
It wants super-efficient power for missions headed to asteroids and Mars. In an effort to design more efficient spacecraft engines, NASA granted rocket manufacturer Aerojet Rocketdyne a three-year contract to develop advanced “solar electric propulsion” engines that could assist in deep space travel. The engines have the potential to be ten times more efficient than chemical engines...
It might seem counterintuitive given how expensive they are to produce, but it is not entirely uncommon to leave the wreckage of downed airplanes right where the plane landed. Some flights go down over remote, inaccessible spots that make it difficult to recover the remains. Other planes are left as a memorial to those who died in the crash. No matter the reason for their abandonment,...
Budget airline easyJet has reported a 6.1pc increase in passenger numbers but a slip in the number of occupied seats on its flights. The FTSE 100 airline flew 6.37 million customers last month, up from 6 million in April 2015. EasyJet’s load factor - an industry measure of the percentage of seats that were actually occupied - fell from 90.8pc a year ago to 90.4pc last month. The res...
Let's be honest. Flying — for most people — means being crammed into a pressurized metal tube with small portholes. Even large business jets with eight-figure price tags offer very little in terms of natural sunlight. Now Embraer has come up with a revolutionary interior that's straight out of a sci-fi flick. With an interior-design concept called the Kyoto Airship, Em...
In the April 2016 issue of Airways, Andreas Spaeth wrote about Dutch carrier KLM’s (Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij or Royal Dutch Airlines) introduction of the Boeing 787-9 into its fleet. Initial destinations served by the new aircraft included Abu Dhabi, Muscat, Rio de Janeiro, Osaka, Delhi, Hangzhou, Xiamen and Chengdu. And on May 4, San Francisco (SFO) was added...
A Ryanair passenger was arrested Thursday night after he shouted a bomb threat while his plane was landing. The man was aggravated that flight crew refused him a beer, and decided to exact revenge by claiming there was a bomb onboard, according to local reports. The flight from Tenerife landed in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, at 9:28 p.m. local time. As the plane was preparing to land, t...
A start-up company hosted in an ESA business incubator is developing the world’s first vertical takeoff and landing aircraft for personal use. The electric two-seater will open the door to a new class of simpler, quieter and environmentally friendly planes available from 2018. “Our goal is to develop an aircraft for use in everyday life,” explains Daniel Wiegand, CEO and one o...
Pilots at a South Korean airline are suing their chairman after he claimed that “flying is easier than driving a car”. The union at Korean Air, South Korea's flag carrier, has filed a lawsuit to the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office against Cho Yang-Ho, who is also the president of the Olympic organising committee for PyeongChang's 2018 Winter Games, for conte...
On 14 October 1947, US test pilot Chuck Yeager did what many thought was impossible. Strapped into the seat of the Bell X1 rocket plane – painfully so, having broken two ribs a few days before in a horse-riding accident – Yeager became the first man to fly faster than the speed of sound. While Yeager’s name may be the one celebrated in the record books, there were other pilots...
The municipality of Kaunas decided on May 3rd to provide 500,000 euros to the low-cost airline Wizz Air to help it operate more flights from Lithuania's second-biggest city, reports LETA/BNS. The city expects that this will help attract more tourists. Wizz Air asked the city to co-fund four new flights from Kaunas Airport, with plans to fly to the Dutch city of Eindhoven and the Nor...
Norway’s SHT air accident investigation board is to resume its search for missing components from the Airbus Helicopters H225 which crashed near Bergen on 29 April. In a statement, SHT says the main focus of its search will be “for parts connected to the main gearbox”, and that this will “continue as long as required”. Preliminary information contained in an eme...
