SR-71 at the Air Show: Why the Blackbird’s Low Passes Were So Rare
Share this story Almost nobody ever saw an SR-71 at work. On operational missions the Blackbird cruised at more than three times the speed of sound and above 80,000 feet, far beyond the view of anyone on the ground. Which is why footage of it making low passes at air...
Jeannie Leavitt: How the US Air Force Got Its First Woman Fighter Pilot
Share this story When Jeannie Leavitt finished US Air Force pilot training at Laughlin Air Force Base, Texas, in early 1993, she had the grades to choose almost any aircraft. She asked for the F-15E Strike Eagle. The answer was no: women were not allowed to fly combat...
Boeing 747 and A380 Fuel Tanks: Why the Wings Carry the Load
Share this story A Boeing 747-8 leaves the gate with up to 63,034 US gallons of kerosene on board. That is 238,609 litres, or 191,603 kilograms. Boeing puts the same aeroplane’s operating empty weight at 220,128 kilograms, so the fuel alone weighs almost as much...
Weight and Balance: The Load Sheet That Doomed Air Midwest 5481
Share this story At three seconds past 0847 on 8 January 2003, the captain of Air Midwest flight 5481 said two words into the cockpit voice recorder: “help me.” The Beech 1900D had just left runway 18R at Charlotte and the nose would not come down. Ten...
Boeing 737NG Flutter Risk: FAA Orders Stabilizer Freeplay Checks
Share this story “Pitch oscillation” is one of those phrases that sounds mild right up until you read what the Federal Aviation Administration thinks it can turn into. On Monday the agency published a final rule ordering operators of almost two thousand...
Fred Smith: The Marine Who Gambled FedEx Back Into the Air
Share this story On the night of 17 April 1973, fourteen small Dassault Falcon 20 jets took off from Memphis carrying 186 packages to 25 American cities. It was the first night of Federal Express. The man behind it, Frederick W. Smith, had learned to lead not in...
Operation Starvation: The B-29s That Mined Japan
Share this story Late on the afternoon of 27 March 1945, 102 Boeing B-29 Superfortresses lifted off from Tinian. The crews had been firebombing Japanese cities for weeks, but on this night their bomb bays carried no incendiaries. Each bomber held a dozen sea mines....
NOTAMs Explained: The Notices Every Pilot Must Read Before Flight
Share this story Just before midnight on 7 July 2017, Air Canada Flight 759, an Airbus A320 inbound from Toronto, was cleared to land on runway 28R at San Francisco International Airport. The crew lined up instead with taxiway C, where four airliners sat waiting to...
Lilian Bland and the Mayfly: The Woman Who Built Her Own Plane
Share this story The engine arrived in Ulster in the summer of 1910 without its petrol tank. Its owner was not willing to wait. She filled an empty whisky bottle with fuel, borrowed the only tubing in the house, which happened to be her deaf aunt’s ear trumpet,...
Hélène Boucher: The Fastest Woman in the World in 1934
Share this story On the morning of 30 November 1934, a small blue-and-red Caudron racer came in to land at Guyancourt, just outside Versailles. It lost speed, dropped onto the treetops of the woods beyond the field and broke apart. The pilot, reached first by fellow...
Recent Comments