In an exclusive podcast, film star and pilot John Travolta told AIN how he’s been helping Bombardier’s flight test pilots to develop the new Challenger 350 jet. Plus how Hollywood high-fliers turn to him for advice on how to get into private aviation.
Test pilot
May 13, 2012 - 2:30pm
Gulfstream’s G650, the U.S. manufacturer’s largest, fastest flying jet, made its first transoceanic crossing to appear here at the EBACE show, having touched down at Geneva Airport on Saturday evening. Both the G650 and the super mid-size G280, which landed Saturday morning, are making their European debuts. They flew in from Washington, D.C.’s Dulles International. Gulfstream intends to apply for city-pair speed records from the U.S.
May 12, 2012 - 7:52pm
The Gulfstream G650 completed its first transoceanic flight Saturday, arriving at Geneva International Airport from Dulles International Airport outside of Washington, D.C., in just six hours and 55 minutes. The green, unpainted aircraft, flying under an experimental certificate, flew at an altitude of 43,000 feet at speeds of Mach .90 to Mach .92, over a ground track of 7,000 km (3,780 nm).
April 3, 2012 - 12:38am
Bell’s XworX has developed into a project-oriented, rapid prototyping shop charged with fashioning targeted solutions to specific aircraft initiatives.
Housed in a hangar at Arlington Airport, Texas, since 2004, XworX initially had the reputation in the industry as being concerned with esoteric and abstract future technologies, sort of a “department of mad scientists.”
February 17, 2012 - 4:55pm
Next month marks the 60th anniversary of the birth of one of aviation’s great “might-have-beens.” The start of development of an aircraft that became a source of national pride. The start of an aircraft that could have been a world-beater. I’m referring to Canada’s mighty Avro CF-105 Arrow fighter. But an even more recent anniversary looms on Monday: the 53rd anniversary of its death.
January 26, 2012 - 3:10pm
Clay Lacy will be honored by the Aero Club of Southern California with its Howard Hughes Memorial Award on February 8. Famed test and aerobatic pilot Bob Hoover will present the award in recognition of Lacy’s achievements spanning some six decades. An airline captain, experimental test pilot, air race champion, aviation record-setter, aerial cinematographer and entrepreneur, “Lacy has accumulated more hours flying jets than anyone on Earth and is widely credited with revolutionizing the business aviation and aerial photography industries,” the group noted.
May 31, 2011 - 8:30am
Gulfstream Aerospace resumed flying the G650 on Saturday, nearly two months after suspending the flight-test program following an April 2 fatal accident involving G650 S/N 6002. Senior experimental test pilots Jake Howard and Tom Horne flew S/N 6001 on a one hour, 39 minute flight that originated and terminated at Savannah (Ga.) International Airport.
April 8, 2011 - 6:06am
As a general rule, AIN does not discuss aircraft accidents with reporters from the general media for the simple reason that we can’t really add much more than background information to what the NTSB and FAA report. We have also found, as have many others, that speculation about the cause of any accident, as is often reported in the general media, is usually pointless and often harmful.
December 21, 2010 - 11:06am
The first conforming Honda Aircraft HA-420 HondaJet took off from Runway 5 at Piedmont Triad International Airport in Greensboro, N.C., at 3:31 p.m. EST yesterday.
October 19, 2010 - 4:10pm
Everybody's been somewhere and done something. But Israel Aerospace Industries chief test pilot Ronen Shapira has been a few more places and done a few more things than most of us.
