Operation Atlantic City: An RAF A400M Lands on Jan Mayen
Share this story There is no harbour on Jan Mayen. There is no town, no permanent population, and for most of the year not much daylight either. There is a strip of black volcanic gravel about a kilometre and a half long, no instrument approach, and a 2,277-metre...
Austria’s Twelfth AW169 Lion Lands, a Third of the Fleet Done
Share this story A single helicopter arriving at a mountain airfield in Styria is not usually news. This one is, because it is the twelfth, and twelve is a third of the way through the largest helicopter recapitalisation the Austrian armed forces have ever attempted....
RAF Air Command Is Now Air & Space Command After 19 Years
Share this story The Royal Air Force has a motto that was chosen in 1912, long before anyone had a serious plan for getting there: per ardua ad astra, through adversity to the stars. On 1 September 2026 the RAF quietly took the astra part literally. Air Command, the...
PEGASE 26: France Sends Four Rafales 40,000 km Around the World
Share this story Four fighters is not an air force. Four fighters, three tankers, two airlifters and three hundred people who can put all of that down on a foreign runway and have it flying again the next morning — that is an air force, compressed. On 8...
F-4 Phantom Crash at Athens Flying Week Kills Two Pilots
Share this story The display had been running for barely two minutes. Thousands of people were standing along the fence line at Tanagra Air Base, north of Athens, cameras up, waiting for the noise that only a Phantom makes. Then the jet came out of a turn, low, and...
Swiss Patriot Deal With Germany Collapses, Costs Could Triple
Share this story Switzerland ordered its Patriot air defence system in 2022 and expected the first fire unit to arrive in 2026. It is now 4 September 2026, nothing has arrived, and the workaround that was supposed to rescue the timetable has just fallen apart....
SNCASE Baroudeur: The French Fighter With No Landing Gear
Share this story Every fighter jet has the same fatal dependency: a long strip of concrete. Destroy the runway and the aircraft is a very expensive ornament. In the early 1950s, with NATO planners assuming their handful of airfields in Germany would be atomised in the...
RAF Boom Refuelling: Britain Finally Confirms the Capability
Share this story The Royal Air Force flies several aircraft that it cannot refuel. This is not a secret, and it is not new, but it is faintly absurd, and it has finally produced an answer. In a written answer on 2 September, Minister of State for Defence Readiness and...
Global Airlines Faces a Winding-Up Petition as Its A380 Sits Idle
Share this story There is an Airbus A380 sitting in the sun at Tarbes, in the foothills of the Pyrenees. It has been there since 16 July 2025. It is painted for an airline that has flown four flights in its entire existence, holds no air operator’s certificate, and is...
Poland Intercepts Russian Il-20 Again: Transponder Off Near Ustka
Share this story For the second time in four days, Polish fighters have been scrambled to meet a Russian Il-20 reconnaissance aircraft over the Baltic Sea. On Thursday afternoon, 3 September 2026, the four-engined turboprop was intercepted roughly 40 kilometres north...
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