Why Almost Every Airliner Is White
Stand at any airport window and count the aircraft. Almost all of them are white, with a tail and a bit of branding to tell them apart. Airlines spend fortunes on brand identity, and then paint their single most visible asset the same colour as everybody...
Why Runways Change Their Numbers
In 2009, Fairbanks International Airport in Alaska closed a runway, sent out crews, and repainted the enormous white numbers at both ends. Runway 1L–19R became runway 2L–20R.Nothing had been built. Nothing had moved. The concrete was in exactly the same...
The Hole in Your Aircraft Window
Next time you get a window seat, look at the bottom of the window. There is a hole in it. A real one, drilled straight through, about the size of a pinhead.Most people who notice it assume one of two things: that it is damage, or that it is there to let air in. Both...
Two Crashes, Forty-Eight Hours, One Question
The Turbulent weighs about as much as two adult passengers. It is built from wood and fabric, powered by a converted Volkswagen Beetle engine, and its own display team has cheerfully described it as little more than a flying motorbike. On Sunday afternoon, in front of...
The Pentagon Wants Lasers That Fly
Cheap drones have humbled expensive air defenses for years now. The Pentagon’s answer keeps coming back to the same idea: a weapon that fires light, costs pennies a shot, and never runs out of magazine. This week a senior Defense Department official told...
The Soviet Hind That Fights for the Marines
In the California desert this month, U.S. Marines rehearsed an attack under fire from an unlikely enemy: a Soviet gunship built to kill NATO troops. The Mi-24 Hind was not captured, and it was not a mock-up. It was the real thing, flying for the other side on purpose....
US and Australia Wage War Over Alaska
There is a patch of sky over interior Alaska so large it could swallow a small country. This month, American and Australian fighter crews are fighting a war inside it. Red Flag-Alaska 26-3 began on 13 August and runs through 28 August 2026, a Pacific Air...
Thirty-Two Minutes Over the Mountains: The Story of Japan Airlines Flight 123
It was the eve of the Obon holiday, when families across Japan travel home to honour their ancestors. Japan Airlines Flight 123 lifted off from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport at 18:12 on 12 August 1985, bound for Osaka. The aircraft was a Boeing 747SR, a short-range...
The Kegworth Air Disaster: How Flight 92 Shut Down Its Only Good Engine
It was meant to be one of the shortest, dullest legs in the timetable. At 19:52 on 8 January 1989, British Midland Flight 92 climbed away from London Heathrow bound for Belfast, a Boeing 737-400 with 118 passengers and eight crew aboard. The aircraft was almost...
The Douglas XB-42 Mixmaster: The Bomber That Hid Its Engines and Ran Like a Fighter
Here is a fact that sounds invented: to bail out of the Douglas XB-42 Mixmaster, you first had to blow your own propellers off. The two blades spinning behind the tail would have shredded anyone who jumped, so Douglas wired the tailcone with explosives to fling the...
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