Tag: AVIATION

Despite stern warnings from flight attendants and pilots, we've always wondered if our iPods or cell phones could really cause an airplane's electronics to go haywire. According to a recent article in The New York Times, personal electronic devices don't always interfere with a plane's electronics -- but sometimes they do, or can, cause problems. Clear as mud, right? Bill Strauss, an engineer ...

At first glance this seems like a terrible idea: putting an iPad front and center in an airplane cockpit. You wouldn't put one at the fingertips of a driver, so it would make sense to keep the app-running, Web-browsing device out of view when careening several thousand feet above ground. But, surprise, that's one of the key features of the Zlin iCub, a new recreational aircraft being shown off at ...

A new set of requirements handed down by the Federal Aviation Administration will overhaul the nation's air traffic control system within the next decade. According to an Associated Press report on CBS News, the FAA mandated that all aircraft and ground control must install and use GPS-tracking systems by 2020. It will cost $4 billion for the estimated 7,000 airliners and cargo planes plus more ...

The last remaining Horten 2-29, a Nazi fighter plane from World War II, is stored in a U.S. government warehouse akin to the one at the end of 'Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark.' With a mostly pressed-wood body and a sleek all-wing design, it looks like something created in Hollywood, too. But this aircraft isn't just a pretty piece of painted plywood. It very well could have changed ...

Sir Richard Branson is liking the color green: His Virgin Atlantic flew the world's commercial aircraft flight powered with biofuel on Sunday, demonstrating how it produces less carbon dioxide than normal jet fuels. "This breakthrough will help Virgin Atlantic to fly its planes using clean fuel sooner than expected," said Virgin's president, Branson, before his Boeing 747 flew from London's ...

Boeing's new 787 may look like most other commercial airliners on the outside, but under the paint, it's a technological marvel. In terms of construction, the thing is lightweight and so more fuel efficient than its predecessors. But the really impressive bits are the computerized ones that keep the thing in the air and pointed in the right direction. The craft has an integrated computer ...

While the FCC and FAA hold in-flight calling and texting at bay here in the US, the European Aviation Safety Agency is on the march to rid the world of this one last bastion of cell-phone-free space, at least in the E.U.. Ryanair, Qantas, and Air France have been testing in-flight mobile use for the past several months. The results of the trial have been impressive enough for the EASA agency to ...