aviation

Five months later, Boeing's 787 Dreamliner is once again aloft.

United Flight 1 took off from Houston Monday morning en route to Chicago. It marked the first flight of Boeing's next-generation airliner since the entire worldwide fleet of Dreamliners was grounded by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration in January in the wake of multiple on-board fires.

The fires were found to be related to the plane's batteries, and in the months since then, Boeing and its suppliers have worked to correct the problems. Last month, the FAA approved Boeing's proposed fix to the battery issues, … Read more

Following a bicycle down the runway at Moffett Field in Mountain View, Calif., a solar-powered airplane took off on a coast-to-coast voyage across the U.S. this morning to promote the message of clean technology.

Piloted by Swiss aviator Bertrand Piccard, the Solar Impulse HB-SIA set off for Phoenix, Ariz., on the first leg of its Across America journey that will also take the slender craft to Dallas, St. Louis, Washington, D.C., and finally New York in early July.

The goal is to go from one end of the country to the other without using a drop of fuel. … Read more

If you know the American Midwest like the back of your hand, I want to pick your brain.

Starting around July 1, I'll be heading out on CNET Road Trip 2013, my eighth-annual journey in search of some of the most interesting destinations for technology, military, aviation, architecture, nature, science, manufacturing, and so on. I'll start in Chicago and spend a month or so traveling through Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Missouri, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Kansas, and possibly Indiana, Iowa, and/or Minnesota.

A couple of months ago, I posted here asking for suggestions of where I should stop, offering a … Read more

It seems no one is immune from the lure of the cell phone. Not even pilots. Not even in midflight.

National Transportation Safety Board records show that the pilot of a medical helicopter sent and received texts before the helicopter crashed in Missouri, killing four people.

As Bloomberg reports, the helicopter was operated by Air Methods Corporation, an air medical transport contractor whose policy forbids its pilots from using their cell phones in flight. The company didn't respond to Bloomberg's requests for comment, according to the news agency. We've contacted Air Methods and will update this report … Read more

The Federal Aviation Administration has approved Boeing's plan to redesign the batteries of the 787 Dreamliner airplanes but testing is needed before the planes can serve passengers again, the Associated Press reported today.

The planes were grounded in January when the batteries of one, a Japan Airlines 787, caught fire.

The Federal Aviation Administration told the AP that Boeing's plan includes "a redesign of the internal battery components to minimize the possibility of short-circuiting, better insulation of the battery's eight cells and the addition of a new containment and venting system."

Boeing said it submitted … Read more

We all know that we shouldn't use our cell phones while driving.

Yes, of course we do it anyway, but always with a tinge of guilt.

Surely, though, few would take that same cavalier attitude if they were piloting a plane. Somehow, one imagines that this task requires a little more concentration, amid the prospect of even more serious danger.

Yet it seems that one pilot of a small charter plane may have needed -- or perhaps merely wanted -- to use his cell phone while he was taxiing toward takeoff on Thursday evening.

As it happens, he wasn't wafting along the slipways of some tiny regional airport in Alberta. No, he was at JFK. … Read more

There's been no shortage of publicity and investigation surrounding the grounding of the world's 787 Dreamliner fleet after recent battery fires aboard the Boeing airplanes. But there's one question that has gone unanswered: Where are all those Dreamliners?

Thanks to our friends at Airchive.com, we now know where all those planes are sitting as regulators, Boeing, and its battery suppliers work to once again get eager passengers aboard the much-hyped aircraft.

According to Airchive.com, there are currently eight carriers flying Dreamliners -- if you can call having a bunch of planes parked on tarmacs at … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--In an era of "Entourage" and a well-publicized fleet of planes personally owned by Google's top execs, the private jet has never before seemed as accessible to so many.

The truth is, of course, that just a tiny fraction of the population will ever set foot on any plane other than a commercial airliner, but traveling by Gulfstream has become romanticized in popular culture, and as that's happened, there's been a rise in the number of companies aiming to provide a more efficient, and more affordable way to fly private.

Into that new environment … Read more

Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill wants you to be able to tweet a photo of St. Louis' famous Gateway Arch while you're soaring above it in your commercial airliner of choice.

At least that might be one option open to you if a letter she sent to the Federal Aviation Administration yesterday has the desired effect.

The Democratic senator said in her letter that she was "prepared to pursue legislative solutions" if the FAA takes too long to loosen its restrictions on the use of portable electronic devices during flights.

"We live in an increasingly connected world, … Read more