EMALS, AAG, and the Catapult That Reinvented the Aircraft Carrier
It is 0200 hours in the Eastern Mediterranean. The flight deck of USS Gerald R. Ford smells faintly of jet fuel and seawater. A yellow-shirted Air Boss raises an arm. Three hundred feet of catapult — not steam, not for the first time in U.S. naval aviation history,...
The Polikarpov I-153 Chaika — The Biplane That Outlived Its Era
By 1939 the biplane was supposed to be finished. Monoplane fighters — the Bf 109, the Spitfire, the Hurricane — were establishing what air combat in World War II would look like. And yet the Soviet Union was, that same year, accepting deliveries of a new biplane...
The Convair B-58 Hustler — A Mach 2 Bomber the World Wasn’t Ready For
In 1960 the Convair B-58 Hustler was, by every measurable standard, the most advanced combat aircraft on Earth. It could sustain Mach 2 — a speed contemporary fighters could reach only in short dashes. It carried a thermonuclear weapon in a detachable streamlined pod...
The Antonov A-40 — The Soviets Built a Flying Tank
It is the kind of idea that should never have left the napkin. Take a small tank, weighing roughly 5.5 tonnes. Bolt on a biplane-style wing and a twin-boom tail. Tow the assembly into the air behind a heavy bomber. Cast it off over enemy lines. Let the tank glide...
Tex Johnston Rolled a 707 Upside Down Over Seattle
Bill Allen, the buttoned-down chief executive of Boeing in 1955, was on a boat. So were the executives of every major airline in the United States — gathered on Lake Washington outside Seattle for the annual Gold Cup hydroplane race. Bill Allen had brought them there...
150 A220s for AirAsia — Largest Single Order Ever
The Airbus A220 has been the most underestimated commercial airliner of the past decade — a Canadian-designed jet (originally the Bombardier C Series) that quietly piled up loyal customers and stellar dispatch reliability while the headlines went to bigger aircraft....
Elon Musk Flew an L-39 — So Can You
Before the rockets. Before the electric cars became mainstream. Before Mars, before the tunnels, before the social media platform — there was a young South African entrepreneur in the Nevada desert, strapped into the cockpit of a Cold War-era jet, grinning beneath an...
The Medical Exam Every Pilot Dreads
Somewhere in a strip-mall medical office, a prospective airline pilot is peeing into a cup, squinting at eye charts, and trying not to think about the fact that their entire career — years of training, tens of thousands of dollars in flight school debt — rests on...
Embraer Just Had Its Best Quarter Ever — $1.4 Billion in Q1
Brazil doesn’t always get credit for aerospace excellence. But on May 8, 2026, Embraer — headquartered in Sao Jose dos Campos — posted the best first quarter in its history. Revenue: $1.4 billion. Growth: 31% year-on-year. Operating profit: up 52%. Backlog:...
Pilots vs. Maintenance Engineers: The Funniest Logbook Entries Ever
Every profession has its internal language — the private jokes, the eye-rolls, the sarcastic notes passed between colleagues who understand each other completely. In aviation, that language lives in the aircraft logbook. Specifically, in the back-and-forth between the...
Recent Comments