TORONTO, ONTARIO – Bombardier Aerospace announced today that Air Niugini, the national airline of Papua New Guinea, has placed a firm order for two Q400 NextGen high-speed turboprop airliners. The airline has also taken an option for an additional Q400 NextGen airliner. (more…)

SpaceShipOne attached to White Knight, prior to separation and rocket powered flight into space.

PLAYA VISTA, CA-    On October 4, 2009, the X PRIZE Foundation will celebrate the fifth anniversary of the largest prize in history, the $10 Million Ansari X PRIZE — won by the Mojave Aerospace Ventures team for the historic flights of SpaceShipOne. Led by famed aerospace designer Burt Rutan and backed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, Mojave Aerospace Ventures was the first private team to build and launch a spacecraft capable of carrying three people to 100 kilometers above the earth’s surface twice within two weeks. The team made world history when it achieved this feat on the anniversary of the historic launch of Sputnik in 1957 — the first man made object that entered earth’s orbit and opened the space age. (more…)

LONGUEUIL, QUEBEC -  Pratt & Whitney Canada (P&WC) will reduce its global workforce by approximately 250 employees by year’s end to align with a projected decline in customer demand and weakness in the global aerospace market with no signs of a recovery in 2010. P&WC is a United Technologies Corp. (NYSE: UTX) company. (more…)

This three-dimensional 3-D animated reconstruction shows the January 27, 2009, accident involving an ATR-42-320 N902FX, operated by Empire Airlines, which crashed short of Runway 17R, Lubbock Preston Smith International Airport, Lubbock, Texas, while executing an instrument landing system approach. (more…)

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A new surveillance system introduced by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in Colorado allows air traffic controllers to track aircraft not covered by radar in remote, mountainous regions.

“The new system, called Wide-Area Multilateration, lets us see aircraft we couldn’t see before due to the rugged terrain,” said FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt. “It improves the safety and efficiency of those flights and saves time and money for passengers and operators.” (more…)

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced the approval of Honeywell’s Smartpath Precision Landing System, clearing the way for increased safety and efficiency at airports by providing precise navigation service based on the global positioning system (GPS). The first U.S.-approved system is located in Memphis, TN and will become operational early next year. (more…)

Photo by: Philip Deridder

A small aircraft that crashed Saturday afternoon in Maple Ridge, B.C. encountered some kind of engine failure, officials said.

Bill Yearwood of the Transportation Safety Board said that engine failure caused some parts of the engine covers to blow off during flight. (more…)

Photo Courtesy Dale Evasin

Columns of thick black smoke were visible coming from the Prince George Airport this week. (more…)

Canada and the US have reached a “tentative agreement in principle” over a dispute that recently erupted over charter flights. The dispute threatened to disrupt the travel plans of teams in the National Hockey League. (more…)

The NTSB today released an animation of the Hudson River midair based on radar and ATC communications. This animation consists of a two-dimensional (2-D) depiction of preliminary radar flight path information of the August 8, 2009 mid-air collision of a Piper 32 aircraft with a Eurocopter helicopter. (more…)