Passengers aboard Boeing's flagship 747-8 Intercontinental, as well as its 787 Dreamliners and 777s will have the capability to make cell phone calls as soon as 2013, the aviation giant said today.

As part of the company's move to boost connectivity on the most modern planes in its fleet, it plans to outfit them so that they can support cell phone usage, as well as Wi-Fi, live television, and "Internet access using in-flight entertainment."

Boeing said its planes should also support wireless streaming media by 2014.

Of course, whether airlines actually allow passengers to use cell … Read more

Say goodbye to turbulence and flying through nasty weather, and many of the costly delays that go along with such airborne unpleasantness.

That's the promise of the latest iteration of Honeywell's IntuVue weather radar system, technology that is designed to allow airline pilots to steer clear of rough weather.

Although IntuVue has been around for several years, offering pilots a three-dimensional view of weather up to about 370 miles in front of them, the newest version of the software adds warnings of up to 10 minutes for turbulence, hail, and lightning.

The IntuVue system, first unveiled in 2008, … Read more

In an effort to sign up 1.5 million new voters, Rock the Vote has been stashing its voter registration QR codes in all sorts of strange places. Recently, it was on T-shirts. Now it's way, way up in the air.

With an assist from Virgin America, Rock the Vote has gone airborne. The voter registration drive coincides with Virgin's new nonstop route from San Francisco to Washington D.C.… Read more

MOJAVE DESERT, Calif.--It's hard to imagine a more complete -- and impressive -- collection of aviation facilities and aircraft anywhere on the planet than the one in this vast, arid, wide-open wasteland northeast of Los Angeles.

Thanks to its endless amounts of dry, flat terrain, useless to most people, and the fact that there are only a few ways in -- vital for security -- the Mojave is, and has long been, the beating heart of the aviation world. It's here that Chuck Yeager first broke the sound barrier. And where Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne ushered in … Read more

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif.--If you want to know what the future of airplane design looks like, you might have to make your way out to the middle of the Mojave Desert.

Tucked away inside a nondescript warehouse building at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center here, NASA, the U.S. Air Force, Boeing, and Cranfield Aerospace are working on an entirely new kind of plane, one which they hope could someday revolutionize aviation.

Known as a hybrid wing body, the plane design, which NASA describes as a cross between a conventional plane and a flying wing design, is … Read more

I have just gotten off an American Airlines flight on which, as I approached my window seat, an off-duty airline lady crew member suggested I sit in the aisle seat instead "as that's what men normally want."

This peculiarly sexist foray into the personal psychology of the male I found slightly disturbing.

However, would I find it disturbing if, on checking in with an airline, the member of staff said: "Loved your post yesterday about men who code naked."

I fear I might like it. Which is why I am in three minds (at least) … Read more

Capt. Francis Gary Powers, the Air Force pilot whose U-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960, was posthumously honored Friday in a medal ceremony at the Pentagon.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton A. Schwartz presented the Silver Star Medal to Capt. Powers' children, Gary Powers Jr. and Dee Powers, in the Hall of Heroes, in tribute to Powers' "heroic action and his loyalty to the United States of America during a pivotal time in our nation's history."

"My sister, myself, my wife, my son, aunts and uncles, cousins, the … Read more

OAKLAND -- Last week marked the 75th anniversary of the Hindenburg disaster, and the end of the golden era of zeppelin passenger travel.

But anyone who lives in or around the San Francisco Bay Area is no doubt aware that these days, zeppelin travel is alive and well. That's thanks to Airship Ventures, a company run out of the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., which operates one of the world's three airships, all of which were build by Zeppelin NT, a company located in Friedrichshafen, Germany.

Today, during an event hosted by the cloud storage … Read more

In Tom Clancy's sensationalist novel "Debt of Honor," a disgruntled pilot decides to avenge his lost honor by crashing a fuel-laden 747 directly into the U.S. Capitol, causing the giant building to explode and collapse. The scope of that fictional disaster was hard to fathom prior to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

But even before 9/11, anyone who had been in Lakehurst, N.J., on May 6, 1937, would have had a pretty good sense of just how big an explosion Clancy had in mind. Because that day, the Hindenburg, a German zeppelin … Read more