EMAS Explained: Why Miami International Has No Arrestor Bed
Share this story On Sunday afternoon a Boeing 767 freighter came off the end of runway 30 at Miami International, crossed the ground beyond it, struck vehicles and burned. Five people on the ground were killed. Both pilots survived with injuries. Within a day the...
GPS Off for Four Hours: The Jet That Navigated by Rock
Share this story An Embraer 170 flew from Puget Sound to southern Alaska and back, four hours and twenty-three minutes, with GPS switched off the whole way. It navigated by reading the magnetic field of the rocks underneath it. This is being reported in several places...
ASM-135: The Only Time a Fighter Shot Down a Satellite
Share this story The thing hanging under the F-15 was not a bomb. It was a two-stage rocket seventeen feet ten inches long, and inside its nose sat an object the size of a large coffee can that weighed thirty pounds, carried no explosive of any kind, and had no engine...
Nanchang J-12: Mao’s Pocket Fighter for Guerrilla Air War
Share this story In 1969 the Chinese air force asked for a fighter small enough to be carried on the back of a truck. The idea was that in a war on Chinese soil, airfields would be bombed flat within days. What survived would be whatever could be hidden, dispersed and...
Black Cat Squadron: Taiwan’s U-2 Pilots Over Mao’s China
Share this story In 1965 the Republic of China Air Force built two graves at the Bitan military cemetery outside Taipei. One was for Major Yeh Changti, the other for Major Chang Liyi. Both men had been shot down over communist China. Both had been declared dead. The...
Operation Rimon 20: Israel’s Ambush of Soviet MiG Pilots
Share this story On 30 July 1970, four Israeli Mirages flew a routine photo-reconnaissance profile over the Gulf of Suez. They climbed to 35,000 feet, made the standard radio calls, and flew in a formation so tight that Soviet radar operators read four aircraft as...
JP Aerospace Teases a Hypersonic Dropped From an Airship
Share this story Last week a volunteer-run space programme in Rancho Cordova, California, released some pictures. They show a dark, wing-shaped vehicle called Hazel dropping away from twin balloons joined by a long truss, high above the Earth. They are stills from an...
ANA Orders Eight More E190-E2s Before Its First One Arrives
Share this story Airlines do not usually order more of an aircraft they have never flown. ANA has just ordered eight. Embraer announced the deal from Tokyo on 4 September, formalising a decision the ANA Holdings board took on 29 July. It takes ANA’s firm order...
FLY91 Orders 40 ATR 72-600s, Going From Six Aircraft to 60
Share this story FLY91 has six aeroplanes. On Thursday it ordered forty more. The Goa-based regional carrier signed a firm order for 40 ATR 72-600 turboprops at a ceremony in New Delhi on 3 September, in a deal valued at roughly $1 billion at list prices. It is the...
Rare P-40C Warhawk Belly-Lands in a Field Near Royston
Share this story The Fighter Collection at Duxford flies aeroplanes that most museums would bolt to a plinth. Late last month one of the rarest of them had an engine problem on a maintenance check flight and ended up on its belly in a field northwest of Royston. The...
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