Share this story Somewhere this morning an aeroplane took off that does not meet its own type design. Perhaps its annual inspection lapsed three weeks ago. Perhaps an airworthiness directive has not been complied with, or a piece of equipment outside the minimum...
Share this story It is one of the most asked questions in American sport aviation, and almost every answer you will find online is wrong in the same interesting way. How high can you fly an ultralight without a licence? People reply with a number. Ten thousand feet,...
Share this story General Atomics has a habit of showing you the aeroplane only once it is already flying. So when the company volunteered, in a statement to TWZ published on 30 October, that it is building a large flying wing called NextGen, the detail worth reading...
Share this story On 5 September 1983, a group of US Air Force F-4E Phantoms was crossing the Atlantic to Germany, refuelling from KC-135 tankers along the way. Halfway over, Major Jon “Ghost” Alexander’s Phantom began losing oil. What followed was...
Share this story On 2 July 1982, Larry Walters, a 33-year-old truck driver, sat down in an aluminium lawn chair in a backyard in San Pedro, California, cut the tether, and went straight up. He had tied 42 helium-filled weather balloons to the chair. He had planned a...
Share this story Everybody in aviation knows the letters. A check, B check, C check, D check, in rising order of seriousness, from an overnight once-over to the one where they take the aeroplane apart. It is one of the first things an enthusiast learns and one of the...
Share this story Two aeroplanes sit on the same ramp. Same type, same year, same engine, same avionics. One belongs to a doctor who flies it to see his grandchildren. The other belongs to a flight school and has a hundred hours put on it every eleven weeks by people...
Share this story The light was already going on Thursday afternoon when a twin-rotor shape lifted away from the airfield at Brčko, in the flat farmland where Bosnia and Herzegovina runs up against the river Sava. Phone cameras on the ground caught what happened...
Share this story A hydraulic actuator is cut out of a DC-10 that will never fly again. Eighteen months later the same actuator is bolted into an airliner carrying three hundred people, and everything about that is legal. The thing that makes it legal is a single sheet...
Share this story Ask a room full of aircraft owners what they are allowed to do to their own aeroplane and most will give you the same number. Thirty-two jobs, they will say. It is on the list, in Appendix A. Count them. There are thirty-one. The thirty-second was...
Share this story In 2003, a US Air Force test pilot named Troy Asher flew a B-1B bomber to a string of world speed records. Twenty-five of them, according to NASA. On Thursday, 29 October 2026, NASA put the same pilot in charge of the place where America flies its...
Share this story Days after it was wheeled out of the factory, the first jet built for Italy’s new-generation Frecce Tricolori has left the ground. The M-346 in the team’s new Pininfarina livery made its maiden flight from Leonardo’s airfield at...
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