EASA Warns Airlines Off Part of Saudi Arabia’s Jeddah FIR
Share this story On 30 September 2026 the European Union Aviation Safety Agency published a two-page document that will quietly rearrange a lot of flight plans. It is called CZIB-2026-09, its subject line is simply Airspace of Saudi Arabia, and it tells European...
Sea Venom and NSM: Royal Navy Sinks Ex-USS Klakring
Share this story The sea off the Outer Hebrides in late September is the colour of wet slate, and roughly 150 nautical miles out into it sat a 43-year-old American frigate with nobody aboard. The former USS Klakring had been towed across the Atlantic from Philadelphia...
Volotea Files for Creditor Protection: Fleet to Shrink From 44 Jets
Share this story Volotea built its business on the routes nobody else wanted: Nantes to Palma, Bilbao to Athens, Verona to Catania. Small cities, medium-sized airports, very orange-and-white checkerboard tails. On 29 September 2026, the Spanish low-cost airline asked...
Airbus A350F Flies: Freighter Completes Its Four-Hour Maiden Flight
Share this story Toulouse has seen a great many first flights, but few in a paint scheme that looks like a cardboard box. On 29 September 2026, the first Airbus A350F, MSN700, registered F-WXLD, lifted off from Toulouse-Blagnac in its brown test livery with bright...
SS John Burke: The Liberty Ship a Kamikaze Erased in Seconds
Share this story At 10:12 on the morning of 28 December 1944, a Japanese A6M Zero dived through anti-aircraft fire and crashed into the Liberty ship SS John Burke in the Mindanao Sea. For a few seconds there was only smoke. Then her cargo of ammunition went up, and...
Swissair Grounding 2001: The Day Switzerland’s Airline Ran Out of Cash
Share this story At 15:45 on Tuesday, 2 October 2001, Swissair chairman and CEO Mario Corti stood in front of the cameras and announced that the airline would stop flying. By then, jets carrying the Swiss cross were already sitting on aprons from Zurich to New York,...
Pope Leo XIV Blesses Rafale Pilots Escorting His Air France A321
Share this story Most passengers get a window seat and a view of the wing. On Monday morning, 28 September, the passenger in the Air France A321 from Lourdes to Metz got the cockpit, a radio microphone, and two Rafales flying about 50 metres off the nose. Pope Leo XIV...
Turkish Pilots Start Eurofighter Typhoon Training at RAF Coningsby
Share this story Turkey will not receive its first Eurofighter Typhoon until 2030. Its first Typhoon pilots, however, are already in Lincolnshire. On 27 September, the Royal Air Force announced that two Turkish Air Force pilots have started conversion training with 29...
SR-71 Over Libya, 1986: Brian Shul’s Run Past Gaddafi’s Missiles
Share this story Somewhere over the Libyan desert on the morning of 15 April 1986, the reconnaissance officer in the back seat of an SR-71 called out a warning to his pilot. Walter Watson was seeing missile launch signals on his defensive panel. Up front, Major Brian...
L’Oiseau Blanc: Nungesser and Coli Vanished Before Lindbergh
Share this story At 5:17 in the morning of 8 May 1927, a white biplane staggered off the grass at Le Bourget, so heavy with fuel that it barely cleared the trees at the end of the field. In the open cockpit sat two of France’s great airmen: Charles Nungesser,...
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