By Garth Calitz There is something rather fitting about Air Zimbabwe returning to London after a 14-year absence. The airline’s last attempt to maintain a regular connection between Harare and the British capital ended not with a grand strategic announcement or a carefully planned network restructuring, but with one of its Boeing 767s effectively being held hostage at London Gatwick. In December 2011, the aircraft was impounded following a court order obtained by American Gen

For most pilots taking delivery of a new aircraft on the opposite side of the world, the solution is relatively straightforward: put it in a container, load it onto a ship and wait for it to arrive. Australian pilot and aircraft owner David Green evidently had other ideas. Rather than dismantling his new CubCrafters Carbon Cub UL and shipping it from Washington State to Australia, Green climbed aboard, pointed the nose east and flew the aircraft home himself. Green’s aircraft

Saab’s latest Gripen has finally done what aircraft are generally expected to do: it left the ground. But while the first flight of a new aircraft is hardly an unusual event in the aviation world, the first flight of the Gripen F represents a significant milestone in one of the more ambitious international fighter-development partnerships of recent years. The two-seat Gripen F, developed by Saab in close cooperation with Brazilian industry, completed its maiden flight on 28 A

The United States Air Force has taken another significant step in the modernisation of its nuclear deterrence forces with the MH-139A Grey Wolf officially achieving Initial Operational Capability (IOC) on August 10. The milestone marks the beginning of the end for one of the most enduring aircraft in US military aviation, the Vietnam-era UH-1N Huey, which has spent more than five decades performing the decidedly unglamorous but critically important job of protecting America's

By Garth Calitz Long before the lights go out and 22 Formula 1 cars charge towards Turn One, an enormous aviation and logistics operation has already been underway for days. Cargo aircraft, helicopters, airports, trucks, medical crews and airspace managers all play their part in getting Formula 1 from one circuit to the next. For Formula 1 fans, the Grand Prix weekend appears to begin when the teams roll out of their garages on Friday morning. The reality is rather different.

By Garth Calitz There is an uncomfortable question hanging over South African civil aviation this week: who watches the watchdog when the watchdog itself becomes part of the investigation? That question has returned to the spotlight following the dismissal of South African Civil Aviation Authority (SACAA) airworthiness inspector and former accident investigator Jeremiah Visser, who says he was fired after raising concerns about the investigation into the 2020 crash of SACAA's

By Garth Calitz South Africa's domestic aviation market is heading into another potentially significant regulatory battle, with privately owned CemAir asking the Competition Tribunal to block Harith Aviation's proposed acquisition of FlySafair. At the heart of the dispute is a question that goes well beyond the ownership of one airline: can an investment group have interests in both a major airline and airport infrastructure without creating a conflict of interest? CemAir bel

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

By Des Waerden Amendment 36: What the Last 18 Months Have Taught Us Almost a year ago, I wrote an open letter to the General Aviation community about the withdrawal of AIC 18.19 and what I believed the issue was beginning to expose within our industry. At the time, Amendment 36 was still somewhere ahead of us, the outcome was far from certain, and much of that letter was a call for the GA community to get involved rather than simply accept the situation as the new status quo.

Electric aviation has spent the past two decades promising to transform the way aircraft are powered, and the 20th Annual Electric Aircraft Symposium demonstrated just how much that conversation has changed. What began largely as a gathering of engineers and enthusiasts discussing the possibilities of electric propulsion has evolved into a serious industry forum examining certification, commercial operations, infrastructure, energy storage, airspace integration and the econom

NASA has handed the next generation of aviation researchers a rather ambitious shopping list: make aircraft faster, quieter, safer and easier to certify. Four university teams have now been selected to tackle some of those challenges under NASA’s University Leadership Initiative, with around $30 million in funding supporting their work over the coming years. The research ranges from propulsion systems intended to push aircraft beyond Mach 4 to artificial intelligence for airc

By Garth Calitz Amendment 36 offers a possible route back to flight for Part 91 aircraft grounded solely because their engines reached the infamous 12-year limit. In the past, owners of Part 91 aircraft reaching the engine’s 12-year calendar limit could mean only one thing: ground the aircraft, open the cheque book very wide and get in line for an overhaul — even when the engine had relatively few hours, good maintenance records and no obvious signs of distress. That situatio

By Garth Calitz South Africa’s long-running general aviation battle over the so-called 12-year engine rule appears to be approaching a significant turning point. After years of consultation, debate, technical arguments, regulatory reviews, and enough paperwork to probably qualify as an aircraft component in its own right, the 36th Amendment to the Civil Aviation Regulations has finally been signed off by Transport Minister Barbara Creecy. The Minister signed the amendment on

By Garth Calitz South African Airways can appoint an Acting Group Chief Executive Officer. There is nothing particularly unusual about that. Companies do it all the time when a permanent executive leaves, goes on leave or becomes unavailable. But SAA is not simply another company filling an empty executive chair. It is the holder of an Air Operator Certificate and operates large commercial passenger aircraft under South Africa's Part 121 regulations. That means there is an im

By Garth Calitz The court battle over South Africa’s Working on Fire programme may have appeared to have reached a finality when the Pretoria High Court cleared the way for Tefla Group to take over the R1.8-billion contract, but it may not be over. While Working on Fire/Kishugu has already failed in its urgent attempt to stop the transition, AfriForum is now pursuing a different route — one that could potentially expose the procurement record behind the controversial award. A

The DTA JP1 is a two-seat hybrid-electric eVTOL that takes a somewhat different approach to the emerging personal electric aircraft market. Rather than relying entirely on batteries, the French-designed aircraft combines electric propulsion with a hybrid power system, allowing DTA to target substantially longer endurance than many small battery-electric aircraft. DTA says the JP1 can remain airborne for up to two hours, with a claimed range of approximately 180 miles with two

Textron Aviation has announced the delivery of the 500th Cessna Citation CJ4, marking more than a decade of production for the light business jet and providing a milestone for the programme as development of the next-generation Citation CJ4 Gen3 continues. The milestone aircraft, a Citation CJ4 Gen2, was delivered to a customer in the Philippines. The delivery also reflects the international customer base for the CJ4, which has been used for corporate transportation, owner-op

The US Army is preparing to modernise its rotary-wing pilot training pipeline, and the aircraft selected to play a central role is perhaps not the helicopter many observers would have expected. Robinson Helicopter Company’s R66 has been selected as the training platform proposed by M1 Support Services (M1), following a four-phase evaluation under the US Army’s Flight School Next (FSN) initiative. The Army has announced its intent to award the Flight School Next contract to M1

India’s AMCA programme has entered a significantly more serious phase during 2026. What was once largely a long-term design exercise is now becoming an industrial programme, with the Indian Ministry of Defence inviting bids for the development and manufacture of five flying prototypes and a structural test specimen. The development programme carries an approved investment envelope of approximately ₹15,000 crore, making AMCA one of India’s most ambitious indigenous aerospace p

Honda Aircraft Company is celebrating two decades since its formal establishment, marking 20 years of innovation, aircraft manufacturing and business aviation development from its headquarters at Piedmont Triad International Airport in Greensboro, North Carolina. The anniversary represents a significant milestone for a company that has taken Honda's engineering philosophy from the automotive world into one of aviation's most demanding sectors. From the distinctive HondaJet to

By Garth Calitz The Republic XF-84H was an exceptional aviation experiment: a turboprop fighter featuring a supersonic propeller, producing an astounding level of noise and earning a reputation that has endured long after the aircraft vanished from the skies. There are aircraft that are remembered because they were successful. Others are remembered because they changed aviation. And then there are aircraft remembered simply because engineers were brave enough, or perhaps opti

By Garth Calitz Air Botswana, Botswana’s national flag carrier, is facing a growing operational challenge as two of its Embraer ERJ-145 regional jets remain grounded in Namibia, despite earlier expectations that they would return to service by July 2026. Their continued absence has contributed to schedule reductions and the cancellation of routes including Gaborone–Windhoek and Maun–Windhoek. The situation highlights a familiar problem in African regional aviation: owning or

A lightweight bush aircraft is not necessarily the first machine that comes to mind when considering a transatlantic ferry flight. Yet that is precisely what a new Carbon Cub UL has accomplished, completing an extraordinary 6,900-nautical-mile journey from Lewiston, Idaho, to Poland and demonstrating just how far modern light aircraft technology has progressed. The flight, completed in July 2026, marks the first transatlantic crossing by a Carbon Cub UL and represents a signi

Few aircraft have changed the way people move, work and respond to emergencies quite like the helicopter. From battlefields and remote agricultural fields to offshore oil platforms, city police departments and rescue operations, rotorcraft have become an indispensable part of modern aviation. Few manufacturers have been as closely associated with that evolution as Bell. Over the decades, Bell aircraft have been involved in some of the most significant developments in vertical