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The FAA’s Office of Airports is seeking comments through Oct. 18 on an engineering brief update on vertiport design that will provide interim standards for aviation facilities with electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft.

This FAA airworthiness directive (AD), which requires a one-time visual inspection to determine the correct assembly of each sliding flange installed on each main-rotor gearbox coupling, becomes effective Oct. 21, 2024.

For our Sep. 12, 2024, webinar, we dove into our archives to highlight one of the most dynamic stories we’ve heard during our four years of producing our webinar series. We revisited an October 2021 webinar in which we featured two pilots from the California Army National Guard who had conducted a rescue mission under grueling conditions, rescuing hundreds of people from a forest fire high in the Sierra Nevada mountains.

Queenstown, New Zealand–based Over The Top has received the auspicious VAI Operator Safety Award, which recognizes the company’s exceptional commitment to safety and its achievement of accident-free flight operations for the 2023 calendar year.

The Vertical Flight Society (VFS) has announced this year’s winners of its student design competition. The University of Maryland’s Huma design took first place in the graduate category and Georgia Institute of Technology’s AeroLay design won the top prize in the undergraduate category.

Lilium plans to appoint Philippe Balducchi, CEO of European defense industry provider KNDS Group, as a nonexecutive member of its board of directors. The appointment is subject to the approval of Lilium shareholders.

(Simple Flying) – Bryan Bernhard, Archer Aviation’s chief growth and infrastructure officer, provides an update on the flight-testing process for the company’s Midnight electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft.

(AIN) – Two years after Guam-based Hansen Helicopters and its owner, John D. Walker, were convicted on multiple federal felony counts related to illegal operations, the US government is suggesting that the company could be continuing to operate in violation of court orders.

(American Machinist) – Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin company, has received a series of US Department of Defense contracts for components and systems on the CH-53K King Stallion.

(Aviation Week) – A US Army uncrewed aircraft systems manager says that a new requirement to develop a new or updated drone in six weeks for the Ukrainian government is impossible, as the military searches for new ways to speed turnaround times for new drone technology.