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Third Major Airframer Skips 2024 NBAA-BACE
The 2024 NBAA-BACE due to be held in Las Vegas, Nevada will open its doors next month (October 22-24) with one less major exhibitor. In a stunning revelation, Textron Aviation has pulled out from participating in this year's event. It is also ironic that Textron hosted the pre-NBAA-BACE media briefing in Wichita and will not be taking part in the actual show itself. This will be three major aircraft manufacturers that have decided to skip the 2024 event...
Heart Aerospace Rolls Out First Full-Scale ES-30 Demonstrator
We have been hearing about Heart Aerospace for a while now but the company has not made a flight with a prototype as yet despite all the orders and press they have been receiving. However, the company recently rolled out its first full-scale technology demonstrator. The prototype is already under ground test trials and Heart Aerospace suggests that it will fly for the first time in the second quarter of 2025...
Jacksonville Hypersonic Test Facility Break Ground
It appears that Hermeus is taking the next step in their testing regime with the expected future construction of a hypersonic test facility in Florida. Hermeus is on the path to developing a hypersonic (MACH 5) aircraft they call 'Halcyon' to fly 20 passengers by the next decade. Currently the company is testing what they call the Quarterhorse which is a much scaled-down prototype. The last major update was that the Quarterhorse MK2 iteration prototype was testing the F100 engine...
Second Flight Of XB-1 Completed
On 24th of August Boom Supersonic updated on the progress of the XB-1 program. After the monumental first flight back on March 22, 2024, the second flight has now taken place and carried forward the test program further. During this flight, XB-1’s landing gear was successfully retracted and extended for the first time, which is typical of second test flights. Additional objectives for this flight test were for the XB-1 team to assess aircraft handling qualities and activate a new digital stability augmentation system – or roll damper – for the first time...
Pilatus Aircraft Expanding United States Footprint
The majority of Pilatus Aircraft's facilities are in Stans, Switzerland and has a United States presence already at Broomfield, Colorado but the airframer is now set to invest and expand even further in the U.S. In the short term the airframer wants to establish a sales and service facility at Sarasota Bradenton International Airport (KSRQ) in Florida. In the long-term Pilatus is looking at an assembly plant at the same location! Pilatus executives and Airport Authority officials signed an agreement to develop 17 acres on the north side of the airport for Pilatus to construct a new state-of-the-art sales and service facility...
50 Speed Records In Less Than 50 Weeks For Global 7500
Normally Gulfstream is in the news regarding speed records with their flagship aircraft but Bombardier is increasingly taking that spotlight. Bombardier's current flagship the Global 7500 has now surpassed 50 speed records in less than 50 weeks of operation. Global 7500 has a top speed of Mach 0.925 and interestingly the top 10 of those speed records involved speeds above 1,000 kph...
Unpaved Surface Certification Received By Piper For M700 Fury
On the 12th of August, Piper Aircraft's flagship M700 Fury has now been certified to operate from unpaved surfaces such as gravel, coral, sand, clay, hard-packed soil mixtures, grass, turf or sod are good to land on with the latest approval from the Federal Aviation Administration...
Gulfstream Makes First Flight With G400
Gulfstream has announced today that the first test specimen of the brand new G400 has officially made its first flight and successfully completed it. It now officially kicks off the flight test regime for the type towards certification. The G400 is the latest offering from Gulfstream after the G700 and in-development G800. The G400 departed Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport at 9:04 a.m. and returned 2 hours, 54 minutes later, having reached a speed of Mach 0.85 and altitude of 41,000 feet/12,497 meters...
First Full-Scale Embraer EVE Prototype Unveiled
Patrons at the recently held 45th Farnborough International Airshow (FIA) had the chance to see a full-scale prototype of Embraers' EVE eVTOL. With that showing, it also made the company the latest eVTOL enterprise to successfully field a full-sized prototype which now joins a list of global companies who have done so already. In fact, eHANG in China has been the first followed by U.S manufacturers like Archer Aviation and Joby Aviation. In Europe, Lilium and Volocopter also have full-scale prototypes flying...
Second Specialized G550 Ordered By NOAA
The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) just announced it has ordered a second Gulfstream G550. This will go along with the previously announced G550 that is expected to replace the current Gulfstream IV-SP that has been in service with NOAA since 1996. The first aircraft was ordered in 2019 and will be delivered to NOAA in 2025. The second aircraft is expected to join the NOAA fleet in 2028...
Full-Scale VX4 Unveiled By Vertical Aerospace
Today Vertical Aerospace unveiled its most advanced and powerful full-scale VX4 prototype ahead of its flight test program. It will see the first use of Vertical’s powerful proprietary battery technology, designed and built in the Vertical Energy Center. Built in is rapid charging and the capability of cruise speeds of up to 150 mph...
MK-II Aurora By Dawn Aerospace
With the age of the Concorde nothing but memories and relegated to the history books, the continuation of supersonic flight outside of military applications has proved to be elusive. However, in recent years there have been a few companies that have fielded supersonic prototypes that were expected to fulfill different roles once certificated. The road to supersonic operation has not be easy for these companies though with at least one of them even going out of business in pursuit of this goal. Aerion was that company that is now defunct and they tried to develop the Aerion AS2...
Hydrogen-Run eVTOL Demonstrator Flies 5 Times As Far
Joby Aviation successfully flew a Hydrogen-powered eVTOL demonstrator over 500 miles in June 2024. All the news relating to eVTOL have been performance derived from an electric drive-train. H2Fly is Joby's German subsidiary and was instrumental in producing the hydrogen-electric propulsion architecture. The distance was 523 miles with the aircraft landing with approximately 10% of its hydrogen fuel remaining...
FAA-Mandated Fix Lags G700 Deliveries
Although Gulfstream has commenced deliveries of their flagship G700, the model has not picked up the pace in deliveries as the airframer would prefer. Model guidance from the airframer suggests that they intend to deliver 50 examples in 2024. After finally receiving Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) certification back in April and soon after by the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) in May, the company delivered an initial 2 in April...
YachtForums: We Know Big Boats!
Launched in 2003 as the first online yachting magazine, YachtForums has evolved into a massive resource for yacht owners, buyers, captains, engineers and enthusiasts. Every day we document yachting's latest splashes with news, features and in-depth reviews written by industry professionals. Up to 2 million people a month follow YF. The accuracy of our discussions is checked by hundreds of experts who care about the resource we've built...
Second Citation Ascend Takes To The Skies
The second flight test article of the Cessna Citation Ascend recently took to the skies to continue certification testing. Internally it is known as P1 as it is the first production-conforming unit of the test fleet so far. The aircraft took to the skies on the 13th of June flying for around an hour and 24 minutes. As an initial test flight the aircraft flew to 13,500 ft and reached a maximum speed of 308-knots...
Archer Midnight To Commence Commercial Ops In 2025
It has been a long road for Archer Aviation but the light at the end of the tunnel for them is becoming brighter. Since October 2023, Archer has been fully testing a full-sized midnight prototype and it is currently assembling 3 more units that will be used in FAA Certification testing campaign. On May 23, the company announced that it has been given its final airworthiness criteria for the Midnight aircraft...
Superfactory For BOOM Supersonic Nears Completion
BOOM Supersonic is currently the only viable entity going through the full motion of processes to enable the re-introduction of supersonic commercial flight. Yes, there are other companies like Hermeus and NASA working on hypersonic vehicles likely with a military slant than commercial. The BOOM Overture has been a long time coming but it is gaining meaningful progress on multiple fronts. The first flight of the flight test demonstrator XB-1 was supposed to have happened in late 2023 but BOOM missed that deadline. Instead the first flight took place in March 2024...
Major Testing Commences On Quarterhorse F100 Engine
The first major engine testing milestone has been crossed for the Hermeus Quarterhorse MK2 aircraft. The company revealed yesterday that it had begun testing its proprietary precooler technology with the F100 engine, made by Pratt & Whitney, an RTX business. Testing took place at Edwards Air Force Base at sea-level static conditions...
Beechcraft Denali To Certify In 2025
The long delayed Beechcraft Denali has commenced Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) certification testing. The clean-sheet aircraft was anticipated to enter service in 2023 but issues with the new GE Catalyst powerplant powering the new aircraft served to derail that timeline...
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