Aviation News

It's that time of year again when the world's major airlines are releasing their financial results for the second quarter, with the Cologne-based German flag carrier andStar Alliance founding member Lufthansa being the latest to get in on the act. Despite a challenging quarter due to a wide variety of external factors, the wider Lufthansa Group was able to increase its adjusted EBIT by more than a quarter.

In 2020, a Lockheed C-130J Super Hercules suffered a hard landing at Ramstein Air Base, Germany. The aircraft sustained damage to its wings, landing gear, and engines, damage so severe that the aircraft never flew again. That is, until July 15, 2025, when the same C-130J took off from Ramstein Air Base once again, as per a press release by the 86th Airlift Wing on Defense Visual Information Distribution Service.

Startup Riyadh Air is expected to begin flying to London Heathrow on October 26, which is the day northern carriers switch to winter schedules. The route from the Saudi capital, Riyadh, is expected to be announced shortly. It would join Air Peace in being new at Heathrow.

Just weeks after warning that proposed sweeping tariffs against Brazilian import products to the United States would cripple Embraer’s exports, relief has been granted via special exemption.

An audit by India's aviation regulatory agency has uncovered over 50 safety violations over the past year of operations at Air India. These ranged from relatively minor infractions to potentially dangerous mistakes. However, India's regulators stressed that larger airlines with more operations and fleet diversity tend to receive more violations, and that it is not necessarily cause for alarm.

The first four of 29 new Boeing AH-64E Apache attack helicopters ordered by the Australian Army are drawing closer to delivery as they enter the final assembly phase at Boeing’s production facility on Mesa, Arizona. The incoming attack helicopters represent a paradigm shift for Army aviation in Australia with major force enhancements over its predecessor, the Airbus Tiger. The first batch is expected to arrive in Australia later this year.

A United Airlines flight from Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD) to Munich was forced to return to the airport just moments after taking off when it suffered an engine failure. Flight 108, operated by a Boeing 787-8, departed IAD at 18:11 on Friday and was climbing through 5,000 feet when the left engine failed. The pilots declared a "mayday", and after a tense half hour in which it dumped fuel, were able to safely return to the airport without harm to passengers or crew.

Airbus has reported a strong financial performance for the first half of 2025 (H1), despite delivering fewer aircraft than in the same period last year. Revenue and profit were both up year-on-year, supported by stable production across core programs. The company’s defense and helicopter divisions also contributed to its overall performance, with steady output across both segments.

The US will welcome six new long-haul routes between August and October. As the summer is well underway, not many launches are coming. Most links will take off in October, especially towards the end of that month. That's because northern carriers will switch to winter schedules on Sunday, October 26.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has flagged potential issues with ram air turbine (RAT) forward fittings on certain Boeing 787 aircraft, specifically -9 and -10 models. The FAA received notices from multiple suppliers warning that the forward fittings were possibly manufactured with substandard titanium.

Bloomberg News is reporting that operators of the Airbus A380 are facing serious reliability issues with the jet. The Airbus A380 is, of course, the largest passenger airliner ever built. This immense size, combined with the superjumbo's technological advancements, makes it an incredibly complex aircraft. Now, over 20 years after the A380 took its first flight, airlines are beginning to feel the pain of that complexity.

Flight attendants at United Airlines overwhelmingly voted against a tentative labor deal struck between airline management and union leadership. The deal reportedly failed to fairly compensate for the role flight attendants have played in supporting United's success, especially when considering that the carrier's cabin crew have not received a pay raise since before the COVID pandemic.

As the rising importance of fuel economy and efficient flight takes center stage, the United States Air Force (USAF) is testing out some new gas-saving technology on the venerable, old C-130 Hercules. That takes the form of simple aluminum fins installed along the rear door and tailplane (tailfin).

As the venerable Hawker Siddeley Hawk T1 approaches the sunset of its star-studded career, sources have hinted at a potential for British Aerospace (BAE) Systems, Saab, Boeing to collaborate on its replacement.

For the first time in over half a century, Southwest Airlines has begun selling assigned seats to its passengers for flights starting January 27, 2026. The move to assigned seating comes after Southwest revamped its four fare bundles in recent months, as well as conducted extensive retrofits across its fleet to introduce new premium seating options.

The US Department of Transportation (DOT) Inspector General’s office will audit the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) relocation of Newark air traffic controller responsibilities from New York to Philadelphia last year. The move aimed to address staffing shortages and congestion in the New York City-area airspace.

United Airlines and JetBlue Airways have received regulatory approval from the United States Department of Transportation (DOT) to proceed with the Blue Sky partnership. The news comes more than a month after Spirit Airlines made a complaint to the DOT stating that the proposed collaboration between the two airlines is anti-competitive.

Welcome to my 176th weekly routes article! It includes six mini-stories about subjectively exciting services that took off between July 21 and 28.

WhileBoeing 747 aircraft are somewhat few and far between these days, and examples of the older 747-200 variant even more so, one particularly interesting example to have remained active in recent years has been a testbed plane belonging to Rolls-Royce. The British engine manufacturer had a 45-year-old 747-200B on its books that it used to test turbofans on flights out of Tucson in Arizona.

Boeing has reported its second-quarter results for 2025, with its performance exceeding analyst estimates as it narrowed its losses. The US planemaker reported a net loss of $612 million - less than half its $1.44 billion losses from Q2 2024 - as its revenue jumped by almost 35%.