This month, Middle River Aircraft Systems celebrates 20 years with GE, and the facility’s future never looked brighter.

The aviation industry’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data. Good news for airlines, data has the opposite impact on their bottom lines. By increasing the use of data, airlines become more efficient, increase utilization of their assets and consequently reduce cost and increase revenue. In addition, the amount of data is not becoming scarce over time, it is actually increasing, at an overwhelming rate.

“Middle East airlines continue adding routes and buying more planes to manage the increased demand,” said Aziz Koleilat, senior executive and general manager of GE Aviation Sales for the Middle East, Russia/Commonwealth of Independent States and Turkey. “We are proud to have more than 2,400 engines from GE and our joint venture partners power aircraft in the region. Our engines do truly move the Middle East.”

In two years, GE Aviation’s Advanced Turboprop has been designed, developed and is now closing in on its first engine run in record time. ATP will be the first clean-sheet turboprop engine to hit the Business and General Aviation (BGA) market in more than 30 years.

What’s it like to be the first person in the world to fly the GE9X engine? That’s the question Jon Ohman, GE Aviation Chief Test Pilot, will be faced with later this year.

Watch GE Aviation’s original Queen of the Skies, the Boeing 747-100 Flying Test Bed take one of her last flights and hear from those who knew and loved her.

August 19 marks National Aviation Day in the United States, celebrating the development of flight. First proclaimed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939, the annual observation falls every year on Orville Wright’s birthday – born Aug. 19, 1871. We have received questions why GE Aviation’s blog, telling our ongoing story of innovative work with state-of-the-art jet engines and integrated systems, is called The Bike Shop. That too is a hat tip to the founding fathers of flight and the innovative work they did.

GE Aviation's sights are set on 2020: the year by which GE has set a goal of hiring 20,000 women in technical roles. GE Aviation is committed to helping move the dial on workforce balance and has already made progress in the business and in GE Aviation's communities.

General Electric’s new 1,300 SHP-rated Advanced Turboprop (ATP) is the first entry in GE’s new family of turboprop engines aimed at Business and General Aviation aircraft in the 1,000-1,600 SHP range. The ATP engine will power the new Cessna Denali aircraft built by Textron Aviation.