Arkansas Neighborhood to See Automated Air Delivery

Residents of Pea Ridge, Arkansas are set to enjoy Walmart's new on-demand delivery service, with a driver a little out of the ordinary. For those within range of the Neighborhood Market Walmart location, orders for select health and wellness items, and a variety of consumable items, will be delivered by a Zipline drone to their front door. After announcing the offering of autonomous delivery in 2020, Walmart and Zipline have been creating a 25-foot platform to act as a miniature airport of sorts, necessary to provide enough room to safely take off and land, as well as house the aircraft and flight operations crew. At full capacity, the system is hoped to service a 50-mile radius.

Begins eMagic, Fixed-Wing Hybrid eVTOL 

Thomas Senkel made eVTOL and AAM history with his pioneering work on Volocopter, neé e-Volo, as one of the founding members and testers of their multi-copter air taxi aircraft. After 5 years with the company, Senkel split in 2016 to pursue more efficient, longer-legged sustainable aircraft. Feeling that a new enterprise and aircraft would offer more fertile engineering ground for his talents, he partnered with Michael Kügelgen to start eMagic. Their focus on a hybrid fixed-wing/multirotor system results in an aircraft with longer range, greater efficiency, and vastly improved flight characteristics when compared to a standard rotor-based eVTOL. 

Renew Design Partnership for Limited Luxury Helicopter

Airbus has launched another stylistic collaboration with classic Automaker Mercedes-Benz for a special edition of their ACH145 Helicopter, as revealed at the European Rotors show in Cologne that a facelift of the helicopter is on the way to court a more executive, premium clientele. The exclusive, named the Mercedes-Benz Style VIP H145, offers improved performance, increased flight safety, and improved exterior design over the base level EC145 on which the aircraft is based. 

AD 2021-24-09 Requires A Visual Inspection Of The M/R Clevis, Rod End, And A Certain Part-Numbered Universal Bearing

The FAA is adopting a new airworthiness directive (AD) for certain Bell Textron Canada Limited Model 430 helicopters. This AD was prompted by an in-flight failure of the main rotor (M/R) pitch link clevis (clevis) due to fatigue damage and excessive wear. This AD requires a visual inspection of the M/R clevis, rod end, and a certain part-numbered universal bearing, performing a purge grease, and performing a magnetic particle inspection of each M/R clevis. Depending on the visual inspection and magnetic particle inspection results, this AD requires removing certain parts from service, replacing certain parts, and performing addition