Share this story The Air Serbia jet was doing everything right. It had landed at Paris Charles de Gaulle on the evening of Friday, 2 October 2026, and was standing still on the apron, waiting for instructions from air traffic control. Then an easyJet Airbus taxied...
Share this story For almost three years they were trainers with nothing to fire. On the evening of 2 October 2026, Poland’s Defence Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz announced that the country’s FA-50GF light fighters had finally entered combat duty,...
Share this story Air Chief Marshal A.P. Singh did not use his farewell press conference to celebrate. With four weeks left before he retires, the head of the Indian Air Force sat down in New Delhi on 3 October 2026 and laid out, in unusually plain words, how far his...
Share this story It was meant to be a routine night run: a patient, a family member and a four-person medical crew, flying from Bermuda to Boston in a small twin-engine jet. Shortly after midnight on Saturday, 3 October 2026, the Gulfstream G100 air ambulance lifted...
Share this story Nobody was at the controls, and nobody was meant to be. On 3 October 2026, a grey, shovel-nosed jet registered N444LX rolled out at Mojave Air and Space Port in California, took off, flew, and landed again entirely on its own. Northrop Grumman’s...
Share this story Most airborne early-warning aircraft announce themselves with a giant spinning disc on their back. The Chilean Air Force’s Cóndor did it with its face. Where a Boeing 707 should have a slim, pointed nose, this one had a huge rounded bulge, as if...
Share this story At 9:04 in the morning on 30 March 1982, Space Shuttle Columbia came out of a clear desert sky over southern New Mexico and settled onto a runway made of gypsum. Around it, for miles, there was nothing but more of the same. It was the end of STS-3,...
Share this story On 8 June 2011, Gary Sinise strapped into the back seat of a two-seat U-2 at Beale Air Force Base in California, sealed inside a pressure suit, and climbed to 70,000 feet. Down below, America knew him as Lieutenant Dan, the bitter, legless veteran of...
Share this story A carrier landing is the only landing in aviation where the pilot pushes the throttles forward at the moment of touchdown. The jet slams onto the deck, the tailhook drags across the steel, and the engines are already screaming at full power. If the...
Share this story Every Su-27 Flanker has a tail that does not quite end. Between the two big engine exhausts, the centre of the fuselage keeps going, a long pointed boom sticking out behind the jet like a sting. Spotters call it the “stinger”, and it is...
Share this story Every airliner and many military jets carry a small propeller that the passengers hope never to see. It sits folded inside the fuselage or a wing fairing, and it only comes out on the worst day of a crew’s career: when every engine-driven...
Share this story Look at almost any photo of a fighter on a real mission and you will see them: big, smooth, bullet-shaped pods hanging under the wings or the belly. They are not bombs or missiles. They are fuel tanks, and many of them are designed to be thrown away...
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