USS Eisenhower Mishap: Two Navy Aviators Eject During Carrier Landing
Share this story At about 6:18 p.m. on Monday, 28 September, something went badly wrong on the flight deck of USS Dwight D. Eisenhower. A jet was coming aboard during recovery operations off the coast of Virginia. Moments later, both of its aviators had ejected....
GE Prepares to Build the First XA102, the Adaptive Engine Meant for the F-47
Share this story GE Aerospace says it is preparing to assemble the first XA102, the adaptive cycle engine it is developing for the US Air Force’s next fighter. In an announcement on 15 September, the company said it is buying hardware from suppliers and testing...
Francis Gary Powers: The U-2 Shot Down Over the Soviet Union
Share this story It was May Day 1960, and the Soviet Union was celebrating. Somewhere above 70,000 feet over the Ural Mountains, a lone American pilot in a glider-winged jet was photographing its secrets. Francis Gary Powers had taken off from Peshawar in Pakistan on...
NORAD Chicago Intercepts: F-16s Flare Planes During Trump Visit
Share this story If you were flying a Cessna over the western suburbs of Chicago on Sunday afternoon without reading your NOTAMs, there is a decent chance an F-16 ended up on your wing. And for at least one pilot, the fighter did not stop at waggling its wings. It...
RAF Fairford Plot: Rubio Blames a ‘Foreign Actor’ as Five Suspects Are Freed on Bail
Share this story It started with a phone call at a quarter to one in the morning. Three vans, apparently heading towards RAF Fairford, the Gloucestershire airfield that has launched American bombers against Iran for most of this year. By dawn on Sunday 27 September,...
Into the Eye of Hurricane Polo: NOAA’s Hurricane Hunters on Video
Share this story A four-engined turboprop lurches, drops and shudders through a wall of grey. Rain hammers the windscreen, the instruments blur, and the flight engineer in the middle seat works the power levers. Then, suddenly, the cockpit fills with light: blue sky...
Eastern Shuttle Flight 1320: The 1970 Hijacking That Brought Screening to US Airports
Share this story On the evening of 17 March 1970, Eastern Air Lines Shuttle Flight 1320 left Newark for Boston with 68 passengers and five crew. The Shuttle worked like a bus: no reservations, no security check, and you paid your fare on board once the aircraft was in...
BAK-12 Arresting Cable: Why Land-Based Fighter Jets Have Tailhooks
Share this story Most people think of tailhooks as something only carrier aircraft need. Then an Air Force F-16 with a hydraulic failure lands at a normal land base, drops a hook from under its tail, and snags a steel cable stretched across the runway. Seconds later,...
Big Week 1944: Operation Argument and the Battle to Break the Luftwaffe
Share this story By February 1944 the Allies had a deadline. The invasion of France was coming in the summer, and it could not succeed with the Luftwaffe still able to contest the skies over the beaches. The German fighter force had to be broken first. The weather...
Boeing 737 MAX Software Glitch: VNAV Can Drop Out in a Go-Around
Share this story A go-around is the one manoeuvre every airline pilot rehearses until it is boring, because when it happens for real it is anything but. Full thrust, nose up, gear and flaps coming in, a new clearance on the radio. It is precisely the moment Boeing has...
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