By Garth Calitz Rumours are circulating ahead of Africa Aerospace and Defence 2026 that a European country could bring an Airbus A400M Atlas to South Africa for this year's show. Nothing has been officially confirmed, and for now the A400M should remain firmly in the "watch this space" category. But if the rumours prove correct, the aircraft's appearance at AFB Waterkloof would carry rather more significance than simply adding another impressive military transport to the stat

By Garth Calitz In less than a week, the skies over Pretoria will once again become considerably busier as aircraft, defence systems, aerospace companies and thousands of aviation enthusiasts converge on Air Force Base Waterkloof for Africa Aerospace and Defence 2026. The 13th edition of AAD runs from 16 to 20 September, with three days dedicated to the trade exhibition before the gates open to the general public for the two-day air show on 19 and 20 September. For five days,

By Garth Calitz There are few aircraft that announce their arrival quite like the Airbus A380. It doesn't so much land at an airport as occupy it. Two decks, four engines, a wingspan that makes taxiway planners reach for the antacids and enough seats to transport the entire population of a "platteland" town in one go. When Airbus launched the A380, it wasn't merely building a new airliner. It was making a rather confident prediction about the future of commercial aviation. An

By Garth Calitz Mozambique’s national airline has decided that if you are going to reinvent yourself, you might as well start with the name. Linhas Aéreas de Moçambique, better known to the aviation world simply as LAM, has begun a new chapter under the rather more internationally familiar name Air Mozambique, coinciding with the arrival of two Embraer E190s and an increasingly determined effort to drag the airline back towards operational stability. The timing is hardly acci

By Garth Calitz South Africa’s aerospace industry has been handed an important reprieve in the latest round of US trade measures, with civil aircraft and aircraft parts and components specifically excluded from the 12.5% tariff imposed on South African exports. For an industry that has spent years building a reputation for producing capable, internationally competitive aircraft, the exemption is more than a footnote in a lengthy tariff schedule. It could make the difference b

By Garth Calitz Cape Town's newest aviation project is promising an opening, a longer runway and a growing hangar complex. There is just one small problem: according to SACAA, the aerodrome doesn't have its licence yet — and its formal Part 139 approval process has not even fully commenced. Atlantic Aerodrome is getting bigger, more ambitious and, apparently, rather more complicated. The new aviation development has been promoting an increasingly impressive proposition for th

By Garth Calitz There are aircraft programmes that arrive with grand promises, enormous launch orders and enough PowerPoint slides to fill a hangar. Then there is the Embraer E-Jet, which quietly went about its business, convinced airlines that a 70- to 150-seat jet could actually be useful, and has now reached the rather significant milestone of 2,000 deliveries. Embraer celebrated the delivery of its 2,000th E-Jet on September 2, 2026, with the milestone aircraft, an E195-E

By Garth Calitz The ZS-CAR story has taken another significant turn, with Transport Minister Barbara Creecy asking Justice Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi to initiate a judicial inquest into the January 2020 crash of South African Civil Aviation Authority (SACAA) Cessna Citation S550 ZS-CAR near George. The move comes after more than six years of controversy surrounding the accident, during which the crash has been investigated, re-investigated, disputed and subjected to increasing

By Garth Calitz Mozambique has overhauled the regulatory framework governing private aviation, introducing a new licensing system that removes the requirement for an Air Operator Certificate for private operators while simultaneously imposing tighter controls over aircraft, pilots, passengers, records and the way privately registered aircraft may be used. The new Regulation on the Licensing of Private Air Operators came into force in July, replacing the system that had been i

An aircraft flew without relying on GPS navigation signals, instead using quantum sensing technology to measure its movement and maintain an estimate of its position. It may sound like something from a particularly ambitious science-fiction script, but this was very much a real flight test conducted by the US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and Honeywell Aerospace. Perhaps the most interesting part of the story is what wasn't happening during those four hours. There was