By Garth Calitz Textron Aviation has marked the rollout of the 500th Cessna Citation Latitude, just over a decade after the midsize business jet entered service. The milestone was celebrated by production employees at Textron Aviation’s Wichita facility, highlighting the aircraft’s sustained position within the company’s business jet portfolio. The Citation Latitude entered service in August 2015 and quickly became one of Textron Aviation’s best-selling business jets. The air

South Africa’s aerospace industry has taken another step towards expanding its local design and certification capability with the unveiling of Peregrine Aerospace, a new partnership between Henley Air, Jonker Sailplanes and On Track Technologies. The initiative was announced at the Aerospace Industry Support Initiative (AISI) 20-Year Commemoration at Waterkloof Air Force Base, bringing together Henley Air’s rotorcraft operations and maintenance expertise, Jonker Sailplanes’ a

By Garth Calitz AAD 2026 has put the Centurion Aerospace Village (CAV) firmly back in the spotlight and potentially provided the catalyst for turning a long-standing industrial concept into a significant aerospace and defence manufacturing cluster. CAV is now seeking a strategic partner to accelerate the expansion of the development, located alongside Waterkloof Air Force Base in Centurion. The timing could hardly be more appropriate. Across the AAD exhibition, South African

By Garth Calitz After years of talking about building a twin, Sling Aircraft is finally turning the dream into aluminium — with the prototype now taking shape in Cape Town and a maiden flight planned for June 2027. South Africa's Sling Aircraft is taking a major step beyond its successful single-engine aircraft with the development of an entirely new twin-engine Sling, a project that the company says has been made possible by a fundamental shift in the regulatory environment.

General Atomics AeroTec Systems (GA-ATS) has brought the iconic twin-turboprop back into production in Germany with the Do228 NXT, an extensively modernised evolution of an aircraft whose combination of STOL performance, ruggedness and versatility has made it a familiar sight in remote and demanding operations around the world. The programme reached a major milestone on 2 May 2026, when the Do228 NXT demonstrator completed its first flight from Oberpfaffenhofen. The flight ca

By Garth Calitz The South African Air Force’s (SAAF) top man will take centre stage at AAD 2026, where Lieutenant General Carl Moatshe will deliver the keynote address on the final day of the conference at Air Force Base Waterkloof. From 16 to 18 September, Africa’s defence chiefs, policymakers, industry executives and assorted people selling solutions to problems that governments have not yet found the money to solve will gather at Waterkloof for the AAD 2026 Conference. The

By Garth Calitz In less than a week, the skies over Pretoria will once again become considerably busier as aircraft, defence systems, aerospace companies and thousands of aviation enthusiasts converge on Air Force Base Waterkloof for Africa Aerospace and Defence 2026. The 13th edition of AAD runs from 16 to 20 September, with three days dedicated to the trade exhibition before the gates open to the general public for the two-day air show on 19 and 20 September. For five days,

By Garth Calitz There are few aircraft that announce their arrival quite like the Airbus A380. It doesn't so much land at an airport as occupy it. Two decks, four engines, a wingspan that makes taxiway planners reach for the antacids and enough seats to transport the entire population of a "platteland" town in one go. When Airbus launched the A380, it wasn't merely building a new airliner. It was making a rather confident prediction about the future of commercial aviation. An

An aircraft flew without relying on GPS navigation signals, instead using quantum sensing technology to measure its movement and maintain an estimate of its position. It may sound like something from a particularly ambitious science-fiction script, but this was very much a real flight test conducted by the US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and Honeywell Aerospace. Perhaps the most interesting part of the story is what wasn't happening during those four hours. There was

By Garth Calitz The rise of electric aircraft is forcing the aviation industry to rethink one of its oldest assumptions: that extinguishing the visible fire means the emergency is under control. The aviation industry is rapidly moving towards electric propulsion. From battery-powered trainers and light aircraft to hybrid-electric regional aircraft and eVTOLs, high-energy batteries are moving from the passenger cabin into the very heart of aircraft propulsion. That transition