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Even with parts of the federal government on pause, Yosemite National Park isn’t letting BASE jumpers off easy. Park officials announced that three people were recently convicted for illegal parachute jumps off Yosemite’s formations amid a legal push to lift the 40-year ban against them. BASE jumping has been prohibited in all national parks since the 1980s. One of the more intriguing features of the 2025 Affordable Flying Expo, scheduled for November 6-8 at the Sun n Fun Aerospace Expo campus is a Friday event we call the MOSAIC Town Hall. Scheduled for Friday, November 7th at 1800ET, the MOSAIC Town Hall will be presented in the nearby Prop 75 building and webcast LIVE via www.airborne-live.net and for the attending audience. Textron Aviation Defense announced production plans for the UJTS, or Undergraduate Jet Training System program. That

Includes 15 Cargo and 35 Passenger Models For Late 2025 Delivery

Shanghai-based eVTOL manufacturer AutoFlight announced that Falcon Aviation Services in Abu Dhabi has ordered 50 of its eVTOL aircraft consisting of 15 V2000CG CarryAll cargo aircraft and 35 V2000EM Prosperity passenger models.

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Anduril Industries’ YFQ-44A Collaborative Combat Aircraft was flown for the first time on October 31, 2025, as announced by the U.S. Air Force, who also confirmed that a decision about production of the CAA is still expected during FY2026 despite the ongoing government shutdown. The Air Force sent out a press release announcing the first flight but there were not many details about what the YFQ-44A actually did, how long it flew, or where it ended. Merlin, developer of autonomous flight technology for the defense sector, announced it has gained the Stage of Involvement 2 with the Civil Aviation Authority of New Zealand, an important step in the DO-178 certification audit cycle that enables regulators to have progressive visibility into the company’s software development program. The FAA finally has a decent excuse to put its drone

More Planes, More Flexibility, and Fewer Barriers to the Sky

The FAA’s new MOSAIC rule doesn’t just reshape how light sport aircraft are built: it changes what Sport Pilots can do. Starting in late 2025, pilots flying under Sport Pilot privileges will gain access to a much wider range of aircraft, which translates to enhanced accessibility, affordability, and flexibility across the board. The most significant update was ditching the long-standing 1,320-pound limit, replacing it with stall speed. This change alone opens the door for popular aircraft like the Cessna 172 and Piper Archer to qualify under the new rules, bringing a huge boost to availability and training options.

Gregory Blatt Discusses Company At EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2025

ANN’s Rex Alexander spoke with Gregory Blatt, co-founder of H55, at the 2025 EAA AirVenture Air Show and Fly-in in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Blatt first recapped the company’s background, which is that he and the two other co-founders were members of the Solar Impulse Project team. That was an electric airplane that completed the first solar-powered flight around the world in 2017. The flight covered 50,000 km with one person onboard and during that groundbreaking achievement, the aircraft’s longest solar flight lasted 5 days and 5 nights, leading to the company’s name, H55. H55 is all about designing, building, and producing certified electric propulsion systems.

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The Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office is at the front end of a year-long AI policing experiment, putting a completely autonomous, $200,000 squad car equipped with thermal imaging drones to the test. The so-called Police Unmanned Ground (PUG) Patrol Partner was developed and donated by Policing Lab and Perrone Robotics. The SUV comes on a Ford Explorer platform, fitted with 360-degree cameras, thermal sensors, license plate readers, and a rooftop drone dock. U.S. National Parks have prohibited the use of drones for any reason – absent a special permit – since 2014, yet increasing numbers of drone pilots have ignored the ban, and there are some reports that it’s gotten noticeably worse since the government shutdown, although that is not entirely clear. Conducting illegal drone flights can lead to penalties of up to $5,000 and six months in ja

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Purdue University’s Research Foundation and the Archaeological Legacy Institute have confirmed that they will be putting their quest to find Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Electra aircraft on hold until next year. The announcement blamed seasonal weather that would jeopardize the expedition if it continued to wait for Kiribati’s green light. SpaceX is clipping the wings on its Starlink Mini users. The company announced that starting November 7, 2025, the maximum supported operating speed for its Roam, Local Priority, and Global Priority plans will drop from 550 mph (471 knots) to 450 mph (391 knots). The change comes as part of what SpaceX calls “ongoing efforts to optimize network performance.” Months after the Federal Aviation Administration pulled her medical on bogus mental health-related claims, Xyla Foxlin has retu

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More than a decade of hard work, legal setbacks, and community advocacy has finally come to fruition, with MOSAIC officially becoming a final rule on October 22, 2025. Around three-quarters of the entire GA fleet now falls under the sport aviation category. The October 22 date is the initial effective date, with additional reforms scheduled for July 2026. Diamond Aircraft is responding to a wave of popular demand from flight schools, clubs, and owners by restarting the production line for its Katana 2-seat single-engine piston airplane. The Katana is well-known for its performance, reliability, and value in the training environment. The company will be building the Katana at its facility in Wiener Neustadt, Austria, and the DA20i will be powered by the Rotax 912 iSc3. One of the more intriguing features of the 2025 Affordable Flying Expo, scheduled fo

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Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, in partnership with NASA, successfully completed the first flight of the X-59, an innovative, quiet supersonic aircraft designed to return the capability of supersonic flight to commercial air travel. The X-59 launched from the Skunk Works facility at the U.S. Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California, and landed near the NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California. King Schools is stepping up to help fill the gap left by the sudden closure of AceCFI, offering impacted CFIs a major discount to its Flight Instructor Refresher Course (FIRC). AceCFI, an online FIRC service, ceased operations after its FAA authorization expired on September 30, 2025. While the FAA had officially removed AceCFI from its list of approved providers on August 29, few customers received any advance notice. Nearly a month in

From 2016 (YouTube Edition): Hear the Story of the CAF B-29 Named “FIFI”…

While at EAA AirVenture 2016, our ANN video crew headed out to get some shots of the Commemorative Air Force (CAF) B-29, known as “FIFI”. We met up with Steve Zimmerman, who was the aircraft commander for “FIFI” on this year’s trip to AirVenture. Zimmerman provides a great overall background of the airplane, how it flies, and what kind of original equipment it still has installed. As Zimmerman describes the various items, our camera crews do a great job of picking up exactly what he was talking about. You’ll also see some great World War II film clips of the B-29’s in action.