Share this story In November 1987, two inspectors at Aloha Airlines climbed onto scaffolding beside a Boeing 737 that had been flying since 1969 and worked their way along its lap joints, rivet by rivet, with a bright light. The airworthiness directive they were...
Share this story On a spring Saturday at Budörs airfield on the edge of Budapest, a polished silver airliner in 1950s Malév colours coughs its two nine-cylinder radials into life and taxies out across the grass. Most onlookers would call it a Douglas DC-3....
Share this story A soldier crouches in dry grass and a launch tube no longer than his arm coughs out a small missile. Before it has cleared the treeline its wings have snapped open and an electric motor has taken over. For the next quarter of an hour it will circle...
Share this story Before dawn on 1 September 1983, a silver Soviet interceptor sat a few hundred metres off the wingtip of a Boeing 747 high above Sakhalin Island. The fighter’s pilot could see the airliner’s flashing lights and its long double row of...
Share this story Outside a building in Everett, Washington, inside a steel cage painted a startling shade of blue, a Boeing 777-9 is flying. It will never leave the ground. It has no engines, no paint and no passengers. It is the fourth 777-9 Boeing built, and it was...
Share this story On the afternoon of Wednesday 6 April 1966, a Soviet jet with a failing engine came down out of the sky over West Berlin, missed the houses along the Heerstrasse, and plunged into a small lake called the Stößensee. Only part of its tail fin...
Share this story In early November 1956, on the deck of HMS Eagle in the eastern Mediterranean, a deck officer raised his flag and a grey jet with rockets under its wings shot off the catapult towards Egypt. It was a Hawker Sea Hawk, and for the next few days it and...
Share this story On 10 June 2013, after three weeks of wind, swell and false starts, a salvage barge off the Kent coast slowly lifted a battered, barnacle-crusted aircraft out of the English Channel. It had lain upside down on the Goodwin Sands since 26 August 1940....
Share this story Every aircraft on the American civil register carries a short code that is entirely its own, from a four-digit number on a club Cessna to N905NA on one of NASA’s old Shuttle Carrier 747s. It is painted on the fuselage, spoken over the radio and...
Share this story Picture a high-pressure turbine disc coming out of a CFM56 in an engine shop. It has passed every inspection it has ever had. It shows no crack, no corrosion, no damage of any kind. By every test anyone can run on it, it is a perfectly good part. It...
Share this story On 18 December 1939, 22 Vickers Wellington bombers flew in broad daylight towards the German naval base at Wilhelmshaven. RAF Bomber Command believed a tight formation of well-armed bombers could defend itself. Over the Heligoland Bight, German...
Share this story The hangar doors slide open, a grey flying wing is towed into the light, and for the first time the camera lingers where it matters: underneath. On Monday 9 November 2026, Chinese state television aired new close-up footage of the GJ-11 stealth drone,...
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