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How Private Jet Travelers Were Still Flying Despite The Heat In Phoenix Doug Gollan , Contributor I write about luxury travel from private jets to experiences Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. If you tuned on the news this past week you learned this time there were no “tapes” and that airplanes sometimes can’t fly in extreme heat. Nearly 50 flights by American Airlines were canceled, impacting thousands of passengers when temperatures at Phoenix’s Sky Harbor Airport approached 120 degrees. While thousands of airline passengers were being inconvenienced by weather as happens to tens of thousands of flights...

Conventional jet engines generate thrust by mixing fuel with compressed air, then igniting it. As the burning mixture rapidly expands, it gets blasted out of the back of the engine, propelling the craft forward. On the other hand, a plasma jet engine does away with the standard air and fuel mixture. Instead, it makes use of electricity to compress and excite gas into a plasma — an extremely hot, dense ionised state comparable with the insides of a fusion reactor or a star — then generate an electromagnetic field from it. Plasma engines have remained in experimental stages for quite...

Airline mechanics assigned to perform critical maintenance on the fleet of Air Force One planes used to fly President Donald Trump and previous presidents were caught using contaminated tools on the craft, causing more than $4 million in damage that could have caused a fire to break out on the plane, according to a federal investigation. Three mechanics working for Boeing, which has a contract to perform critical maintenance on the Air Force One fleet, "failed to observe explicit warnings" while attempting to clean the plane at a Boeing-owned plant in San Antonio, Texas. Boeing, which has caused a firestorm...

TUSKEGEE, AL COULD LAND AIRCRAFT PLANT IF GLOBAL AEROSPACE AND DEFENSE FIRM WINS T-100 CONTRACT WITH U.S. AIR FORCE Macon County, AL (WSFA) – Leonardo-DRS has submitted a bid in the U.S. Air Force competition to assemble T100 aircraft at Tuskegee, Alabama’s Moton Airfield. Alabama Governor Robert Bentley announced the bid on Thursday. He said if the global aerospace and defense firm wins, the advanced assembly center would create 750 high-wage, full-time jobs over a 10-year ramp-up period. The project would begin in 2019 and the total investment in the T-100 project’s buildings, infrastructure and equipment could reach $250 million....

Pilots and flight crews of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSF) will be tasked to fly and deliver two of the five leased turbo-prop TC-90 aircraft to the Philippine Navy’s (PN) Sangley Point air facility on March 27. This was confirmed by Navy spokesperson, Capt. Lued Lincuna, in an interview with the Philippine News Agency (PNA) Friday. He said they are still to get the names of the Japanese pilots. The JMSDF will formally transfer the TC-90s to the Navy on the same day. Lincuna said the Navy will get the remaining three TC-90s before the end of the year....

New York Sen. Charles Schumer is calling on the National Transportation Safety Board to launch a study into a spate of small plane crashes around New York City. “We’re only a few months into 2017 and already we’ve seen two small plane crashes here in the New York metro area,” Schumer (D-N.Y.) said at a news conference in Manhattan on Sunday, referring to two accidents involving airplanes from Long Island last month. In a letter to NTSB Chairman Christopher A. Hart, Schumer, the Senate minority leader, requested that the agency study New York’s small plane accidents over the past year...

The Sukhoi Design Bureau forged a reputation for big and powerful fighter-bombers. Today, the Russian company primarily builds different variants of the Su-27. Almost unnoticed, a dwindling number of much older Sukhoi Su-22s remain in service.

China aims to capture the attention of the global export market with its new stealth fighter variant. The latest FC-31 Gyrfalcon, upgraded from its original J-31 version, flew publicly for the first time over the northeastern city of Shenyang on Friday, state-run media China Daily first reported. The J-31 airframe was first openly unveiled in 2014 at the Zhuhai Airshow. The radar-evading aircraft, which bears similar resemblance to U.S. F-35 and F-22 fighters, is smaller than China’s Chengdu J-20.

While we have a lot of sunk research costs in the F-35 that are unrecoverable, the question is how to allocate our money today, and the F-35 would be a waste at current prices. If Trump cannot negotiate a more reasonable price per plane, we should take that money and use it for what the military really needs. First and foremost, we need more soldiers in all branches of the military. Obama has shrunk the armed forces down to unconscionable levels. Secondly, we need more drones – a lot of them. Just think: if one F-35 crashes, we have lost...

Atheist activist, Green candidate Rob Sherman dies in plane crash Rob Sherman, who died over the weekend in a crash of his small plane in Marengo, operated a business helping people build aircraft from kits. But the 63-year-old was better known as a colorful political activist and Green Party candidate — some might say gadfly — who called journalists and introduced himself as “Rob Sherman, your favorite atheist.” At one time, he had license plates that spelled out ATHEIST. Though he came in for derision as a self-promoter, he challenged the use of government-sponsored Christmas creches and displays and anything...

Comical march of so-called "Russian aircraft carrier group" headed by aircraft carrier "Admiral Kuznetsov" to the shores of Syria at war, amused the entire Internet, it seems, risks to become the biggest shame in the history of the Russian Navy. The reason is simple: no country in the region has agreed to fill the aggressor ships. By all indications, they will be destined to stupid drift in the Mediterranean without fuel until they get own tanker with fuel oil from Russia itself. The last hope of the Kremlin admirals was refueling in Malta, but today, 27 October, Foreign Minister of...

Aircraft engineers in Germany have successfully tested the world’s first four-seater plane that uses emission-free hybrid fuel cells to fly. The 10-minute test flight Thursday at Stuttgart Airport in southwestern Germany involved two pilots and two dummy passengers. The twin-cabin plane, known as HY4, was developed by aircraft maker Pipistrel, fuel cell specialist Hydrogenics, the University of Ulm and the German Aerospace Center DLR. …

NEW DELHI: India will finally ink the deal for direct acquisition of 36 Rafale fighter jets from France on Friday, in what will be an urgently-needed booster dose for the country's dwindling air combat power. IAF, after all, is down to just 33 fighter squadrons when at least 42 are required for dissuasive deterrence against China and Pakistan. The first omni-role Rafale, also capable of delivering nuclear weapons, will touch down in India within three years. India can buy two to three Russian heavy-weight Sukhoi-30MKIs or five to six indigenous Tejas light combat aircraft for every Rafale. But it's also...

Over the last century of military aviation, several fighters have earned the nickname “flying coffin.” Military aviation inherently pushes up against the limits of technology and human endurance, particularly where fighter and pursuit aviation are concerned. Flying a fighter is remarkably dangerous, even when no one is trying to shoot you down. Engineering a capable fighter plane is also a struggle. Relatively small changes in engine, armament and airframe design can transform a clunker into an elite fighting machine. Many of the best fighters in history were initially viewed askance by their pilots.

The office of Connecticut’s governor says Sikorsky Aircraft has committed to keeping its headquarters in the state and adding jobs in an agreement that involves $220 million in state incentives. […] The deal calls for Sikorsky to build nearly 200 CH-53K King Stallion helicopters in Connecticut for the U.S. Navy until at least 2032. The incentives pledged by Malloy’s office include grants and tax exemptions. …

Military aircraft can have notoriously short lifespans, especially during periods of technological ferment. The most elite aircraft of World War I could become obsolete in a matter of months. Things weren’t much different in World War II. And at the dawn of the jet age, entire fleets of aircraft became passé as technologies matured. The advanced fighters that fought in the skies over Korea became junk just a few years later. But a few designs stand the test of the time. The B-52 Stratofortress first flew in 1952, yet remains in service today. New C-130s continue to roll off the...

Northrop Grumman has been awarded a USD39.3 million contract related to the development of a laser-based self-defence system for the US Air Force (USAF). The contract, which was awarded by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) on 23 August, is for the Self-Protect High Energy Laser Demonstrator (SHiELD) Turret Research in Aero-Effects (STRAFE) programme. Northrop Grumman will develop and deliver an advanced beam control system for integration as part of a complete laser weapons system into a tactical pod for USAF fighter aircraft.

The "Hawaii Mars II", one of two remaining Martin Mars, performs flybys and drops 7,200 gallons of water for the crowd at the 2016 EAA AirVenture airshow in Oshkosh, WI. This massive flying boat is the world's largest warbird, and an exceptionally rare sight. It was delivered to the US Navy in 1946 and later converted for civilian use as a fire fighting aircraft. During AirVenture, the Mars is flying off of Lake Winnebago just a couple miles east of Oshkosh.

The home flight simulator belonging to the MH370 pilot had a route plotted into it which ended in the Indian Ocean, officials have confirmed.... ...The confirmation corroborates earlier reports that the device had programmed in it a route similar to the one which investigators believe the doomed flight took on its final voyage.

China has completed production of the world's largest amphibious aircraft, state media has said, the latest effort in the country's program to wean itself off dependence on foreign aviation firms. The state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) unveiled the first of the new planes, dubbed the AG600, Saturday in the southern port city of Zhuhai, the official Xinhua news agency reported. The aircraft, which has a maximum range of 4,500 km (2,800 miles), is intended for fighting forest fires and performing marine rescues, it said. At around the size of a Boeing 737, it is far larger than any...