NASA and Uber have signed an agreement to ensure safe development of flying taxis in urban environments. At Uber’s second annual Elevate conference in Los Angeles on Tuesday, the company also revealed it plans to take Uber Air to the skies by 2028. Flying car illustration. Pic by Shutterstock NASA tells The Reg: For crying …

Drone safety biz Altitude Angel has swept up $4.5m (£3.19m) in series-A funding, it has announced today. The main backer is the aerial-tech-loving Seraphim Space Fund. Accelerated Digital Ventures (ADV) and Frequentis are also throwing cheques at the biz, based in Reading, England. Altitude Angel has been working on its …

British startup Altitude Angel has, in conjunction with air traffic control service NATS, launched an air-traffic-as-a-service app for drone operators. Drone Assist "presents drone pilots with an interactive map of areas of airspace used by commercial air traffic", according to Altitude Angel. The theory is that the large …

Altitude Angel calls itself “The Internet of Flying Things”, but it’s more “Facebook for drones”. It’s a database of "things" which unmanned aircraft might worry about. The idea is that whenever someone launches an Unmanned Aerial System they will check in with Altitude Angel to find out if there are hazards in the areas where …

The National Air Traffic Service is shifting its software onto a bespoke cloud infrastructure, which it hopes will help reduce delays the next time it's hit by a systems outage similar to the one it suffered last year. The body is spending tens of millions of pounds on its "aviation cloud", it says will improve "resilience and …

An “electrical fault” wiped out Belgium's air traffic control systems nationwide this morning, according to Belgocontrol, which is responsible for air navigation above Belgium and Luxembourg. A power surge knocked out the air traffic control system, as well as back-up power generators. An investigation into what caused the …

Analysis London's airspace was effectively shut down on Friday afternoon after a flight data server fell over, the National Air Traffic Services (NATS) has confirmed to The Register after multiple sources gave us specific details of the cockup. Hundreds of flights were cancelled or diverted after NATS was forced to restrict the …

EC officials are pushing for countries in the 28-member bloc to bring an end to "gridlock in the skies" above Europe, by urging them to be more flexible about national airspace. The EU's transport commissioner, Violeta Bulc, said during a speech in Rome, Italy on Friday that attitudes needed to change to address what she …

A computer crash that caused the collapse of a $2.4bn air traffic control system may have been caused by a simple lack of memory, insiders close to the cock-up alleged today. Hundreds of flights were delayed two weeks ago after the air traffic control system that manages the airspace around Los Angeles' LAX airport went titsup …

A big outage that struck Britain's air traffic control system on Saturday was due to a technical fault with a touch screen interface provided by Frequentis, The Register has learned. On Saturday 7 December, during the run-up to one of the busiest times of the year for the UK's airports, controllers at NATS (National Air …

Moves to replace conventional air-traffic infrastructure - at present reliant on slow and inaccurate radar and voice comms - with modern satnav and digital networking tech are reportedly "on the right track". Present-day air traffic is handled primarily by ground controllers using radar, either primary (where the pulse from …

Australian air traffic investigators believe the Qantas Airbus which suddenly lost altitude over Western Australia, seriously injuring 14 passengers, may have suffered from computer problems. The Airbus A330-300 was flying normally at 37,000 feet when the computer system warned of an irregularity with the elevation system and …

The University of Reading is to scale back a planned wind farm just off the M4 because of fears it could interfere with air traffic control radar at Heathrow Airport. A pilot study on the site found it suitable for wind turbines, but a study from British Aerospace showed the planned six turbines could mess with radar. The …

An air traffic control fault that brought Dublin airport to its knees last week has been traced to an intermittently flakey network card. Sadly, while the problem was simple enough to diagnose, it’ll be weeks before the airport’s air traffic control system will be able to run at full capacity. The system went for a little lie …