Swissair 111: The Fire Above the Cockpit That Changed Aviation
Share this story Fifty-two minutes after leaving New York, the pilots of Swissair Flight 111 noticed an unusual smell in the cockpit. It was the evening of 2 September 1998, the MD-11 was cruising at 33,000 feet over the Atlantic south of Nova Scotia, and nothing else...
Milan Malpensa Officially Named After Silvio Berlusconi
Share this story Milan’s Malpensa Airport now officially carries the name of Silvio Berlusconi. At a ceremony in the arrivals area of Terminal 1 on Friday 25 September, the former prime minister’s family and senior government figures unveiled the new name,...
A350F First Flight Set for 29 September: Airbus’ Freighter Is Ready
Share this story Airbus has a date. On Tuesday 29 September at 10:20 local time, weather and systems permitting, the first A350F freighter will take off from Toulouse for the first time. Airbus will stream the flight live on X. The aircraft, MSN700, registered F-WXLD,...
Etna Ash Shuts Catania Airport Until Sunday: Red Alert Over Sicily
Share this story Sicily’s busiest airport has shut again. On Saturday 26 September, ash from Mount Etna’s North-East Crater forced Catania-Fontanarossa Airport to stop all flights, first until the afternoon and then until noon on Sunday 27 September. A...
Canada Signs GlobalEye Term Sheet With Saab for Six Radar Jets
Share this story Ottawa put out a press release on Thursday morning with the word capability in the headline and four ministers queued up to welcome it. Read past the quotes and the document Canada actually signed is a term sheet — a written agreement about what...
F-117 Nighthawk: Retired in 2008, Still Flying in 2026
Share this story In December 2025 a photographer in the California desert filmed two black diamonds coming through a low-level route at a few hundred feet. In 2026 another one caught them again. The aircraft were F-117 Nighthawks, and the United States Air Force...
Rafale for Portugal: Dassault Signs a Deal With Portuguese Industry
Share this story There is a scale model of a Rafale on the table between the two men signing. It is a small detail and it is the entire point: the document being signed is not a contract for aircraft. It is a promise about Portuguese factories. On 23 September 2026,...
RAF Space Effects Squadron: Britain Forms a Unit to Fight in Orbit
Share this story The Royal Air Force has formed a squadron whose base it will not name, whose size it will not give, and whose readiness date it will not state. What it will say is what the unit is for: disrupting, degrading and denying an adversary’s activity...
Finland and Sweden: First Joint Intercept Over the Gulf of Finland
Share this story Two air forces that spent decades outside every alliance scrambled together on Thursday, and for the first time in their history they did it as one. On 24 September 2026, Finnish and Swedish Quick Reaction Alert fighters were launched to intercept and...
Apollo Laser: The Netherlands Will Build Australia’s Drone Killer
Share this story Every drone shot down over Europe in the past year has been destroyed by something that cost more than the drone did. That is the arithmetic problem sitting underneath the whole counter-drone debate, and it is the reason a Dutch state secretary has...
Recent Comments