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United States aviation news

Alaska Airlines is adjusting a plane's flight plan so passengers can see solar eclipse

Lucky passengers on Alaska Airlines Flight 870 will get a special sight when they look out the window: a total solar eclipse. The flight from Anchorage to Honolulu purposefully adjusted its departure time so that the plane's passengers could see the eclipse's totality — the period when the entire solar disc is covered and only the outer edges are visible. The plot to change the fl...

Jet Aviation St. Louis completes cabin upgrades

Jet Aviation St. Louis has completed 22 Global and Challenger cabin-management upgrades with the Rockwell Collins Venue system. “We developed this installation with Rockwell Collins and installed the first Venue system upgrade in a Global XRS to replace the Cabin Electronics System (CES) in 2014.” said Blake Hogge, senior manager, Avionics Sales at Jet Aviation St. Louis. “Sin...

Boeing and Paramount join forces for multi-role aircraft

US plane maker Boeing and the South African defence company Paramount said they would collaborate on light multi-role aircraft. Boeing will provide advanced intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities and weapons systems for Paramount’s Mwari military aircraft, the companies said on Monday. “The multi-role aircraft will become a significant player in the global aer...

Analysts Continue Panicking About the Boeing 777

In the past year or so, a growing contingent of aerospace analysts have made dire predictions about demand for Boeing's 777 widebody jet. They found some support for their bearish viewpoint earlier this year, when Boeing announced plans to cut the 777 production rate from 8.3 per month to seven per month for 2017. Weak demand for the current-generation 777 could potentially be exp...

Semi-private planes are the new first class

First class isn’t high enough for some flyers. “So many passengers get upgraded to first class [now] and usually you are sitting next to somebody horrible,” says Oren Alexander, 28, a Soho resident who works in real estate. Alexander is one of a growing number of wealthy — but not wealthy enough to own their own jet — New Yorkers booking seats on semiprivate pla...

Union report: Allegiant Air planes suffer high number of mechanical problems

The latest round in Allegiant Air's public relations battle with its pilots' union opens this week with the union's release of its third report in the last year tallying maintenance issues on aircraft that interrupted flights or departures. The report by the Teamsters Aviation Mechanics Coalition, which is working with the Teamster local representing pilots, said the Las Vegas airli...

Savvy travellers reveal how to fly in a private jet for free

Private jets are usually thought of as an exclusive means of transport for chief executives, high-paid athletes or A-list actors. But a travel blogger has revealed how he and his wife got a taste of the high life and had a jet all to themselves without having to pay a dime. By flying in the lap of luxury, Gilbert Ott, 29, and Laura Burns, 28, didn’t have to endure queues or annoying se...

NASA Wants to Bring Back Supersonic Jet Travel

Since the dawn of the Jet Age, airline travel has evolved radically save for one aspect: We still fly at around 500 mph. The Boeing 707, usually credited with starting it all in 1957, cruised at 600 mph with an altitude ceiling of 41,000 feet—almost identical to airplanes now in production. NASA says technology is now primed for a leap forward—to supersonic flight—cu...

Check Out the Military’s Experimental Helicopter Plane

What takes off like a helicopter, flies like a plane, and looks like something Orville Wright might dream up on mescaline? The military’s next X-Plane! On Thursday, aircraft maker Aurora Flight Sciences announced that its LightningStrike design had received the prime contract to continue the development of the VTOL X-Plane project. (VTOL stands for vertical takeoff and/or landing.) The De...

Gyrocopter pilot nearly collided with airplane

A Florida man who flew a small gyrocopter through protected Washington airspace before landing outside the U.S. Capitol last spring was seconds away from colliding with a Delta flight that had taken off from Reagan National Airport, prosecutors said. In a court filing Friday, prosecutors said Douglas Hughes flew his one-person aircraft almost directly into the oncoming flight path of the 150-pe...

Florida golf course site of heroic plane landing by 18-year-old pilot

A fairway is often considered a golf hole's runway, a desired approach destination for one's ball flight. However, on a Florida golf course Saturday afternoon, the short stuff became a literal airstrip for a plane making an emergency landing. The St. Petersburg Police Department said that, on its way from Lakeland to Manatee County, a 1939 Taylor Craft fixed-wing airplane suffered mecha...

U.S. Delta Air Lines to resume flights to Russia from May 16

The U.S. airline Delta Air Lines plan to resume flights to the Russian Federation starting from May 16 this year, the company’s local representative Leonid Tarasov told TASS Friday. "We have flights from Sheremetyevo scheduled for May 16, and plan to launch them starting from that date," he said. Delta plans flights from Moscow to New York from Sheremetyevo’s Terminal D...