The World of Aviation

The Italian navy will introduce its NFH90 helicopters in a phased approach in order to speed up their service introduction. The plan will see a small number of ‘Step A’ aircraft accepted in late 2010 giving a meaningful operational capability (MOC), allowing initial training to start soon and a syllabus to be finalised by the

Ethiopian Airlines signed a Memorandum of Understanding for 12 Airbus A350-900s at the Dubai Airshow. The airline says it plans to operate the aircraft from its hub in Addis Ababa, linking Africa with Europe, the US and Asia.

The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has approved both Airbus A330-200 and -300 models for ETOPS (Extended-Range Operations for two-engined aircraft) “beyond 180 minutes”. The new capability will be available as a customer-selectable option which extends the diversion distance potentially up to 1700 nm. This distance corresponds to a maximum ETOPS diversion time for the

The AgustaWestland AW149 multirole military variant of the AW139 medium twin helicopter completed its first flight on November 13, a day after the AW159 Lynx Wildcat updated Lynx for the British military flew. The AW149’s 20 minute flight, from AgustaWestland’s Vergiate plant in northern Italy, was captained by AgustaWestland chief test pilot Giuseppe Lo Coco,

The BAE Systems Mantis UAV completed its first flight at the Woomera range in South Australia recently, BAE announced on November 13. The Mantis is a large medium altitude long endurance (MALE) UAV with twin pusher turboprop engines mounted on rear fuselage sponsons, and was displayed in mockup form at the 2009 Avalon Airshow. BAE

The first production optimised F-35A JSF, vehicle AF-1, took to the air for the first time on November 13 for a 96 minute flight after a delay of about eight months. The aircraft is an instrumented test aircraft and is the first F-35A CTOL jet to be built on the Fort Worth moving production line