Aircraft & Propulsion

The likely return of the 737 MAX is adding to what many fear will be overcapacity as airline recovery stalls.

Seven years after the demise of the X-51 program, the Pentagon puts Boeing back in the running for hypersonic cruise missile programs.

With work reduced to documentation, it is not clear how the group is preserving corporate knowledge for a possible restart.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) wants to move some employees from its suspended SpaceJet program to defense activities, as part of a wider intention to apply skills from the civil aeronautics business to the rest of the group.

Falcon 9 engine issue delays first U.S.-launched ISS crew flight since the space shuttle.

Ask the Editors: Deciding whether to diversify away from the Boeing 737, Southwest must weigh the pros and cons of a dual fleet.

COMAC has reiterated its plan to achieve certification for the C919 narrowbody airliner in 2021, adding that it will try to deliver the first unit in the same year.

NASA tests on Boeing’s 787-10 ecoDemonstrator provided unprecedented system-level acoustic data for improving low-noise airliner designs.

Tecnam’s electric; China unmanned test sites; Canadian AAM; Volocopter’s UAM backbone; Beam solar charger; Loon stratospheric record

Flight tests for the first time synchronously measured noise on the ground and on the aircraft.

Francisco Gomes Neto talks with Aviation Week in his first interview for the aerospace trade press.

An enlarged second stage would have two engines and more propellant. Much more payload space can be provided.

Ask the Editors: Airbus’ strategy remains expanding its overseas market share, so the OEM is not likely to bring work back to Europe.

Guidance, navigation and control (GNC) software for Stratolaunch’s Talon-A hypersonic flying testbed has passed a preliminary design review and is being readied by developer Draper for loading next year into the vehicle’s flight control computers.

Ask the Editors: There is room for both and overlap between both, and who will win where will play out over the next decade.

Listen in as CEO Francisco Gomes Neto gives his side of Embraer’s breakup with Boeing, what he thinks of finding new partners, and how he plans to steer the Brazilian aircraft company through the COVID-19 storm.

Stratospheric cell mast; Heaviside favors elegance; Pipistrel picks Honeywell; Volansi flies vaccines; Iris enables BVLOS.

Boeing is working on updating 747 flight computer software to eliminate an issue introduced in the software’s most recent version that causes both of the aircraft’s computers to reset in-flight.

Transonic Truss Braced Wing, electrified propulsion small-core turbofans and high-rate composites top NASA’s priorities

Our roundup of the main aerospace and defense stories making the news this week.

From Boom to Joby, aviation startups are turning to 3D printing to reduce time and cost required to field new products.

Aviation Week editors honored more than two dozen 2020 Laureate Awards winners from around the globe in a virtual event.

Ask the Editors: Comac’s C919 is unlikely to appear in the airline fleets of developed economies in the next few years.

Kawasaki’s compound; Rolls’ eVTOL rig; ADAC OKs multicopters; Aerion’s eSTOL linkup; Eve for UAM; and Compact rotary power.

South Korean wireless communication provider SK Telecom is to establish a mobility business unit, and a joint venture with Uber, with urban air mobility as a future target market.