+1

This is horrible and scandalous. Sadly, this is what happens when you let a country -that's basically stopped funding its military- participate in exercises so they don't feel left out.

Of course, if they'd been middle-aged men looking to spend some dollars on massages, the police would have left them alone.

If you speak to the guys from Matra Auto (I have), who got sold to Pininfarina and then to Segula Tech, they're blaming their former management for setting the unrealistic sales expectations, not the Avantime or its performance.

What killed Matra Automobile was Renault's decision to produce the Espace in-house; at that point the Matra factory had no product and that's when they proposed the Avantime to keep the production line going.

The NFL are such shits. I'm sure their merchandising team got bonuses for this.

Lots of great replies in the comments but I would like to nominate Paul Bracq,

That they claim to do this to "address future pilot shortages" is outrageous BS.

They messed up when they (COMAC) just showed up to the CAAC with the plane half done and said "certify this". The CAAC simply refused the plane and COMAC had to work with them to redo a lot of stuff. As for the CAAC, their regulations (for airworthiness) are strict copies (down to the article numbers) of what the FAA…

Not sure that applies to aviation safety. The CAAC is extremely anal about that subject (as its leaders are likely to be held personally responsible if there's a crash) and has been very leery of COMAC's attempts as it (the CAAC) simply doesn't have to experience to certify A/C to a world standard.

Held in small groups with only two participants per vehicle, participants will practice emergency braking, hone drifting skills and perfect full-lap road course driving methods on the snow in Lamborghini vehicles. The program has been designed to give the participants a maximum of driving time, starting early in the…

Great post depicting something awesome AND fun to read too. I especially liked your Kanye analogy...

Nice! Looks like it was a cool experience.

as said by others, it is a separate entity that, besides the aerospace business, is also huge in Ship systems (they make turbines for ultra large tankers and all the guidance stuff)

There are a few inaccuracies in your point. Saying that Airbus has worse efficiency than Boeing is BS. I've studied op data for fuel consumption of narrow and wide bodies in service in China (specifically cost per seat/mile) and while the B737 does outperform the A320, the A330 with Trent engines absolutely destroys…

A great article as usual.

AVIC has another GA factory in Shijiazhuang, Hebei province, that assembles Cessna kits and produces the Y5B, based on some ancient soviet design. They claim to have exported that plane to Mexico and the US in the past and we always had our doubts. Y12 seems like a decent plane as Harbin are one if the more advanced…

It was a Chinese airline.

Last year an A340 pilot from an Asian airline I won't name, didn't feel like waiting for a tug to push his plane out of its parking spot so, instead, he opened the thrust reversers, pushed the throttle and voila! my company sold that airline two brand new nacelle systems... He clean burned through the whole thing but…

Agreed, tugs can be pretty cool.