Passenger aboard Air Antilles AT42 near Saint Martin on Mar 2nd 2011 steals almost $ 250,000 when airborne

A passenger aboard this flight went to the loo and proceeded to disassemble the partitions leading to the cargo hold where bags containing about $ 1.4 million had been placed. He made of with almost quater of a million dollars. Still at large. Probably he saw Di Caprio's film "Catch me if you can". (avherald.com) More...

Glitch for Boeing Dreamliner 787 at Japan airport

No big deal here, it is the normal teething problems of a new aircraft going into service which in this case the ANA and Boeing Tech Reps will fix right away and send it on to continue earning its keep and accumulating experience. (www.alternet.org) More...

Father sends his 9 year old kid in a balloon, alone that is

TOME, N.M. (AP) -- Nine year-old Bobby Bradley floated into history early Saturday, taking off solo in a hot air balloon and landing perfectly about a half-hour later to become the youngest trained pilot to accomplish such a feat. As the morning sun rose in the remote New Mexico town of Tome, Bradley took off from in the company of three other balloons, whose pilots included a designated balloon examiner for the Federal Aviation Administration. BLOGGER'S remarks: Shouldn't the father… (www.kmov.com) More...

Extraordinary feat by pilot Matevž Lenačič successful flight around-the-world flight in a Pipistrel aircraft!

When only big, powerful and fast aircraft seem to make the news, a small 100 HP aicraft that qualifies as a bit bigger than an ultralight flew from Slovenia to practically all continents crossing the Equator line not less than 4 times, flew very close to Mt. Everest at FL 290, crossed the Atlantic, Pacific and all major bodies of water, some legs 10 and 11 hr long, and then back to home base safely with no small amount of luck. Kudos to him and his team. (www.pipistrel.si) More...

Air Force Shelves $3B Worth of Brand New Drones

Another example of how badly the Pentagon/Air Force are at managing contracts. They swallowed whole the Northrop Grummann claims that the Global Hawk was going to be far more efective than the U-2 in terms of reconnaisance capabilities and cost (no pilots on board needed) and I don´t know what else. And the solution: continue using the U-2 and throw away 3 BiLLION DOLLARS of Global Hawks. Nice gong fellas. (news.yahoo.com) More...

Seems like the Pentagon is having seconds thoughts about the F-35 programme

If this bird did not meet the performance as estipulated in the contract not the price (lets not forget that it started at about 56 million and now it is 85 million PLUS the cost of engines ~ 115 million) this damn weapons programme has to be ditched and the responsable individuals have to explain where and how they were wrong so that this does not happen again (this is wishful thinking of course) (www.fool.com) More...

LAN working with Boeing on 787 reliability issues

Seems like the 787 in spite of having about 15 months of airline service by now (with Japan´s ANA) the teething problems do not stop. United for one, Qatar Airway (whose CEO was mad at Boeing on TV a few weeks ago) and now LAN Chile. Boeing has a long way to go before it can claim that the 787 is fully compliant and reliable meanwhile all these glitches should set the airframe manufacturer back a few more millions in penalties, guarantee/warranty issues. (www.flightglobal.com) More...

Most Expensive Plane: B-2 Bomber costs more than the Space Shuttle

Anything that flies, specially if it is a weapon system like a B-2, or the Shuttle, or a business jet, costs and arm, and a leg and sometimes bankrupt the unaware. (news.yahoo.com) More...

American in talks to buy 100 Airbus planes, Bloomberg report says

American is conidering buying up to 100 Airbus 320 series aircraft to replace aging and non efficient MD-80 series and Boeing 757-200s who are showing excessive wear and tear. (blogs.star-telegram.com) More...

Iran shot down a Navy Grumman RF-4 drone

The RQ-4 is slow and has no countermeasures to protect itself so if it goes inside enemy airspace just a couple of miles it is dead meat. What was the rationiale by DOD, USAF and Navy to spend billions on something that can´t gather intel beyond a mere 50-80 nautical miles. SEVEN DECADES AGO the Soviet Union had already developed SAM missiles capable to shoot down anything above FL 50K: on May Day 1960 Gary Powers' U2 was shot down deep inside Russian airspace. Two years later Maj. Rudolph… (www.wired.com) More...