Brazil’s thrice-elected president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is slated to meet with China’s leader Xi Jinping on April 14, in a pivotal visit between the nations with a potentially profound impact on western aerospace.
Jon Ostrower and Elan Head·
Boeing rolls-out final 747 EVERETT — It was the one-thousand five-hundredth and seventy-fourth — and final — time a 747...
Denial of aviation is a weapon that predates the 21st century battlefield. Yet, with the return of war to Europe, it is also aviation’s Achilles’ heel. With it comes a cascading series of immediate and longer term consequences in the skies as commercial and industrial links are quickly broken after decades of cultivation following the fall of the Soviet Union.
Yet, even with this key development, the jet will return to a transforming Chinese aviation ecosystem that bears little resemblance to the world just before the Max was grounded in March 2019. Since then, the dynamics between the U.S. and China have shifted considerably, along with a pandemic that has reshaped its logistical relationship with the world. And all this against the backdrop of major shifts in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s approach to western business.
Yet, over the past week, chatter across a cadre of Chinese aviation watchers and social media postings suggested that the prototype MA700 had made its maiden flight around Sept. 23 or 24 from the the Aviation Industry Corporation of China’s (Avic) manufacturing plant at Yanliang Air Base in Xian, where China produces many of its military aircraft. The new April 2021 footage was the first public appearance of any MA700 progress since March 2020 when Avic and Xian rolled-out the first static test airframe. Chinese state media had reported in early 2020 that MA700 was slated to fly before the end of that year.
Afghanistan is lost. Beyond the crushing enormity of the human tragedy unfolding there, the jarring images from Kabul Airport capture not only the desperation to escape the Taliban, but the very essence of what aviation represents as a path to the future. Embraer heavily revised its turboprop concept and with it the company is shifting its focus from Asia squarely to North America. Qatar Airways has pulled 13 A350s from service on the order of its home regulator, but what's paint issue facing the aircraft?
