Aircraft manufacturers and suppliers widely expect the COVID-19 coronavirus crisis to result in a short, sharp shock to the air transport sector, but nothing disruptive yet to their business models, according to comments made during the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s 2020 Aviation Summit.
Ahead of flying its privately owned habitat to the International Space Station, Houston startup Axiom Space has signed a contract with SpaceX to ferry three fare-paying tourists and a professional commander to the station as early as June 2021.
Satellite communications (satcom) terminal supplier Isotropic Systems will license components of its optical multi-beamforming antenna technology to aerospace and defense companies to build products “capable of unleashing a new era of inflight connectivity.”
The GoFly team is considering its next step after high winds on Feb. 27-29 prevented the final fly-off between personal flying devices competing for a $1 million grand prize.
The COVID-19 outbreak and the disruption it is causing to international travel could hit industry-wide orders for long-haul aircraft, Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury told a Mar. 4 hearing of the French senate’s economic affairs committee.
Startup Joby Aviation will be the only electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing developer to provide a vehicle for flight testing in NASA’s urban air mobility Grand Challenge development testing event this year.
