Graf Zeppelin World Flight: Around the Globe in 21 Days, 1929
Share this story In August 1929, most people had never been in an aeroplane, and nobody had flown around the world in anything as comfortable as a hotel. Then a silver airship 236 metres long drifted over Tokyo, then over the Pacific, then over Los Angeles, with a...
Instrument Landing System: How ILS Guides Airliners Through Fog
Share this story The fog is so thick that the crew of an airliner on final approach cannot see the ground, let alone the runway. Yet the jet is tracking a line through the murk with an accuracy measured in metres, descending along an invisible slope towards a...
ASELSAN KGK-84 Wing Kit Passes First F-16 Qualification Firing
Share this story A Turkish F-16 has released a 2,000 lb bomb that flew itself to its target on a pair of pop-out wings. On 26 October 2026, ASELSAN announced that its KGK-84 winged guidance kit had completed its first qualification range firing from an F-16 at the...
ARRW Hypersonic Missile Enters Production in $694M Air Force Deal
Share this story Three and a half years ago, the US Air Force told Congress it would not buy the AGM-183A Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon. On 26 October 2026 it announced that it had done exactly that. The Department of the Air Force has handed Lockheed Martin a...
FAA Designees: DER, DAR and Who Really Signs Off an Aircraft
Share this story Ask who certifies a new airliner in the United States and almost everybody answers: the FAA. It is a reasonable answer. For the overwhelming majority of the individual findings that add up to a certification, it is also wrong. The signature on most...
Buzz Aldrin in MiG Alley: The Sabre Pilot Who Filmed a MiG Pilot Ejecting
Share this story Buzz Aldrin is remembered as the second man on the Moon. Sixteen years earlier, he was a 23-year-old US Air Force lieutenant flying the F-86 Sabre over the north-western corner of North Korea, near the Chinese border, where the MiG-15 came across the...
Infrared Search and Track (IRST): How Fighters Hunt by Heat
Share this story Every fighter pilot knows the uneasy moment when the radar warning receiver lights up: someone, somewhere, is looking. Now imagine being tracked with no warning at all. No radar emission to detect, no tone in the headset, nothing for a jammer to...
Turbojet vs Turbofan vs Turboprop: How Jet Engines Differ
Share this story Walk along the apron of a busy airport and you pass three very different-looking machines. A regional airliner with two big propellers. A widebody whose engine intakes are so wide you could almost stand up inside them. And, if you are lucky, a slim...
AAA Rescue Helicopter Hit by Laser in Aargau, Three Crew Hurt
Share this story The crew were seconds from touching down at a medical emergency when the cockpit filled with green light. On Saturday evening, 24 October 2026, a rescue helicopter of AAA Alpine Air Ambulance was hit by a laser beam on its final approach to a landing...
Aeroelastic Flutter: The Failure Mode That Sets Every Speed Limit
Share this story On 19 October 2026 the Federal Aviation Administration issued airworthiness directive 2026-20-14, ordering operators of 1,987 American-registered Boeing 737NGs to measure the free play in their horizontal stabiliser pivot hinges and jackscrews. The...
Recent Comments