A Boeing  787 Dreamliner took to the sky on Monday in a test flight aimed at showing that the plane’s new lithium-ion battery system meets regulatory safety standards, a key step in ending a two-month, worldwide grounding of the high-tech jet. Monday’s roughly two-hour flight, which Boeing said “went according to plan,” lacked the crowds [...]

The Yankee Air Museum (YAM) will present its 18th Annual Polishing Party and Bomber Buffing, 10 a.m.-2 p.m., Saturday, April 6, at Willow Run Airport in Belleville, Mich. Participants will get a chance to help polish a four-engine Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber and a twin-engine North American B-25 Mitchell medium bomber. This is the [...]

Here it comes again: the Great Who Flew First Debate. This time it is courtesy of Jane’s All the World Aircraft, considered to be one of the world’s encyclopedic, not-to-be-doubted sources of aviation information and their radical shift in which they de-throne the Wright Brothers and enshrine Gustav Whitehead as the first to achieve powered [...]

1918 – Ensign John McNamara makes the first U.S. Navy attack on a submarine. 1926 – Willy Messerschmitt, a graduate of Munich Technical College and already an experienced designer of light aircraft and sailplanes, forms the Messerschmitt aircraft company. 1928 – Jim Lovell, American astronaut, was born. James “Jim” Arthur Lovell, Jr., is most famous as the commander of Apollo 13, which [...]

Japan’s All Nippon Airways will delay retiring four aircraft to help maintain services already hit by the grounding of its entire fleet of troubled Boeing 787 Dreamliners, Kyodo News reported on Saturday. International regulators grounded all Dreamliners in January after a battery on a Japan Airlines 787 caught fire and forced an ANA flight to make [...]

Due to spending cuts, U.S. Navy aircraft will be sent into long-term storage, training will be limited to a simulator and the daily routine will shift to admin work. And it may begin as soon as April. These are the latest details from Naval Air Forces, which is planning for the standdown of four carrier [...]

For the first time in its 29-year history, the Museum of Aviation at Georgia’s Robins Air Force Base is downsizing. The museum is getting rid of 29 planes and three missiles, which is about a third of its total collection. Museum Director Ken Emery said the move is largely due to U.S. Air Force personnel cuts [...]

As if the aviation scene here in the U.S. hasn’t already experienced its share of sequester-related cuts (think Blue Angels and Thunderbirds), the Federal Aviation Administration has some of its own: today it released the highly anticipated list of airport tower closures. Robert Goyer at Flying Magazine posted an excellent story, along with the complete [...]