Chaos is reigning across Western Europe today, with hundreds of flights canceled due to volcanic ash sweeping across the continent. The pulverized rock and glass from the Icelandic Eyjafjallajokull glacier volcano is harmful to the engines of airplanes , apparently. More

The Solar Impulse, a solar-powered glider with a wingspan larger than that of a Boeing 787, completed its first true flight today, a major milestone in its aim to circumnavigate the globe in 2012. More

If you’re thinking to yourself, “that’s sort of a small window for a luxury hotel suite,” well, you’re right. But it’s only because this room occupies the entirety of a repurposed Cold War-era East German aircraft. OK, the view isn’t anything special: the plane stays grounded outside the Teuge airport in the Netherlands. But the room itself, dubbed the Vliegtuigsuite, is spectacular, including three flat screen TVs, a Blu-ray player, a sauna, and a jacuzzi.

It’s not every day a a major new aircraft takes the skies for the first time, but today’s special: Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner is currently taking its very first test flight over the skies of Everett, Washington. Over 55 airlines including Continental and Northwest have already purchased some 840 of the next-gen planes, with All Nippon Airways scheduled to take the first delivery. The test flight is scheduled to land in a couple hours — we’re assuming work to mount Boeing’s airborne laser system on the nose in order to defeat hackers will begin shortly thereafter. Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner takes flight for the first time originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Dec 2009 14:09:00 EST.

You’ve already engrossed yourself in the media reports stemming from Mojave Spaceport, but if you’ve been hunting high and low for a few good frames of the SpaceShipTwo unveiling , look no further. Our homeslices over at Gadling were on hand for the event, and they did the honors of filming the introduction as well as the craft’s first public movements. Hit that source link for a look, and be sure to check your pulse if you aren’t feeling inspired when the credits roll. Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo: the video unveiling originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 Dec 2009 17:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds .

Good news, kids — the solar-powered jet with globetrotting ambitions has started sneaking out of the hangar and onto the runway for some mild exercise in the form of landing gear and taxi testing. Captained by Bertrand Piccard — a real person — the Solar Impulse project is still on track for a 2012 globe circumnavigation attempt powered only by the sun’s rays from above and the well-wishes from below. The humongous bird is described as having “the wingspan of an Airbus and the weight of a car,” and its recent outdoorsy jaunts have done nothing to dampen spirits, making that roadmap for its first flight early next year seem entirely viable. We’ve got no less than three videos for you after the break, but we won’t mind if you only watch one. Continue reading Captain Piccard’s Solar Impulse starts runway testing Captain Piccard’s Solar Impulse starts runway testing originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Nov 2009 06:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds

You may bang on the legacy airlines, but American Airlines has a good thing going here with Gogo . The outfit has just completed installation of in-flight WiFi on 150 of its MD-80 aircraft, and in order to give you a better idea of how to prepare, it’s now launching an online widget that’ll let you know if your bird will enable web surfing when you get on. The tool is completely web-based, so any PC or smartphone can access it; the only real knock is that it only informs you of a “yes” or “no” 24 hours prior to departure, so it’s still impossible to book a flight 3 months out and know for certain if you’ll be able to hop online. This is definitely something that should be adopted by the other airlines (pronto!), but we can’t help but dream of the day when something like this is unnecessary due to in-flight internet becoming completely ubiquitous. Ah, the future — how you tease us so

Southwest Airlines may not own a plane with a headrest infotainment system, but it’s still far and away the most enjoyable commercial flight you’ll find in the US of A (save for Virgin America , naturally). Granted, we’d like to see in-flight WiFi offered on a few more of its flights (read: 100 percent of them), but hey, we’ll take free checked bags and friendly employees any day of the week. We’ll also take fuel savings and environment stewardship, both of which Southwest is aiming to give us by creating the planet’s first “green plane.” By utilizing recyclable InterfaceFLOR carpet, weight-saving seat covers and life vest pouches, a lighter foam fill in the seats and aluminum (as opposed to plastic) seat rub strips, the newfangled Boeing 737-700 ends up some 472 pounds lighter than a conventional one. The savings? 9,500 gallons of jet fuel per year

Here’s something you don’t see every day: a Mi-24 helicopter firing off dozens of rockets at once. This one is Macedonian, and is from a “training exercise.” All bow before the might of the Macedonian army! [ Big Picture ]

MIT Professor Missy Cummings (a former F-18 Hornet Navy Pilot), and her team of 30 students and undergrads, have successfully demonstrated how an iPhone could be used to control an Unmanned Area Vehicle, or UAV. As part of their work at MIT’s Humans and Automation Lab (HAL, heh), the team thought about ways to improve on the suitcase-sized controller that soldiers must currently lug around to control hand-thrown Raven UAVs. The iPhone app they developed sends GPS coordinates to the craft, which then in turn can send photos and video back to the iPhone. We had the idea in June,” Cummings told Danger Room.