The Federal Aviation Administration signed an agreement Friday with the military that will allow the commercial use of tiltrotor aircraft, which fly like planes but take off and land like helicopters, by 1995.
Under the agreement, the FAA will participate in the testing of the military's V-22 Osprey tiltrotor program to speed up the civil certification process of the aircraft.The tiltrotor looks similar to a medium-size propeller plane except that it has shorter wings, larger propellers and the engines at the end of the wings can rotate from straight ahead to straight up, allowing the aircraft to take off and land like a helicopter.