The Jet That Took Off Hanging From a Hook
Share this story Picture a flatbed trailer tilting slowly skyward in the California desert until it stands almost vertical, and clinging to it nose-up like a wasp on a windowpane, a stubby silver dart of an aircraft. There is no runway in sight. There is no landing...
China’s Cargo Drone Just Flew Itself
Share this story On a grey morning in Pucheng, in China’s Shaanxi province, a chunky white-and-blue aircraft with two propellers and a twin-boom tail rolled down the runway, lifted off, and flew a full 22-minute circuit — climb, manoeuvre, approach and...
Amazon’s Delivery Drones Just Left the US
Share this story In a back garden in Darlington, a 40-kilo aircraft drops out of the County Durham sky, hovers about four metres up, releases a shoebox-sized parcel onto the lawn, and climbs away again. No van. No driver. No knock on the door. Just a tube of mascara,...
The $9 Billion Jet That Never Flew a Passenger
Share this story It flew. That is the strangest, most expensive part of the whole story. The Mitsubishi SpaceJet was not a paper aeroplane or a CGI fantasy that died on a designer’s screen. It rolled out, it taxied, it rotated off the runway at Nagoya, and it...
Philippine Airlines Puts Its A350-1000 on the Manila–Toronto Marathon
Share this story Philippine Airlines has just made one of the world’s longest commercial hops a little fresher. As of 5 June 2026, the flag carrier is flying its brand-new Airbus A350-1000 nonstop between Manila and Toronto — a roughly 13,200 km marathon...
The Fighter With Its Wings On Backwards
Share this story Picture a desert morning at Edwards in 1949: dust, sagebrush, and a fighter that looks like someone bolted the wings on the wrong way round. Most aircraft wings are fat where they meet the fuselage and slim to a graceful point at the tip. The Republic...
Japan Wrapped a Jet in White. Why?
Share this story On a humid June afternoon, a Japanese plane-spotter pointed a long lens at the flight line of Gifu Air Base and froze. Tucked against a hangar wall sat something large, the size of a fighter, and it was wrapped from nose to tail in white fabric like a...
Singapore Airlines Eyes 50 New Widebody Jets
Share this story When Singapore Airlines goes shopping for aircraft, the rest of the industry leans in to watch. The Changi-based carrier has spent decades building a reputation as a benchmark for premium long-haul flying, and the jets it chooses tend to become the...
The Man Who Jumped From the Edge of Space
Share this story On 16 August 1960, a tiny open gondola hung beneath an enormous helium balloon, 102,800 feet above the New Mexico desert. That is more than 31 kilometres up — high enough that the sky overhead is black, the horizon curves, and there is almost no air...
The Coke-Bottle Trick That Broke the Sound Barrier
Share this story In the early 1950s, the newest, fastest jets in the world kept running into an invisible wall. They would accelerate beautifully — and then, just short of the speed of sound, a surge of drag would swallow their engines’ power and stop them dead....
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