When the Landing Gear Won’t Retract: What Pilots Do Next
Share this story Positive rate of climb. Gear up. The pilot moves the lever, the hydraulics whine, and a few seconds later the wheels should be tucked away behind closed doors. Then a warning appears instead, or a gear leg simply stays where it is, hanging in the...
Fume Events Explained: What That Cabin Smell Really Means
Share this story The boarding music is still playing when it drifts down the aisle: a stale, cheesy, slightly chemical smell. Crews have a name for it. They call it “dirty socks”, sometimes “wet dog”. Most passengers wrinkle their noses and...
EAA Aviation Museum Adds Six Aircraft, From Seattle II to a PBY
Share this story A flying boat that sank U-boats off Iceland. A homebuilt biplane that took one Washington State couple more than a decade. A powered hang glider that lifted off a frozen Wisconsin lake in 1975 and started a movement. They now share a roof in Oshkosh....
Boeing 737 MAX 10: FAA Poised to Certify the Biggest MAX
Share this story Boeing rolled its longest 737 out of the Renton factory in November 2019. Nearly seven years later, the jet still lacks the one thing it needs to carry a paying passenger: an FAA type certificate. That wait may now be measured in days. On Friday, 16...
Edelweiss A340 HB-JMC: Gear Fault Turns Punta Cana Flight Back
Share this story Ten minutes out of Zurich, a fully fuelled Airbus A340 bound for the Caribbean stops climbing and starts drawing circles in the sky north of Aarau. Somewhere beneath the fuselage, one set of wheels has refused to fold away. For the crew of Edelweiss...
FAA 1,500-Hour Rule: How US Airline Pilots Actually Get Hired
Share this story Ask anyone in American aviation how you get hired by an airline and you will be given a number. Fifteen hundred hours. It is the single best-known figure in the industry, it is quoted as though it were a law of physics, and almost every part of it is...
Part 103 Ultralight Helicopters: The 254-Pound Problem
Share this story There is a helicopter you can buy, fly away from your own field, and operate in American airspace without a pilot certificate, without a medical, without registration, and without any airworthiness approval whatsoever. It is not a loophole and it is...
F-35 Sensor Fusion: How Three Sensors Become One Track
Share this story A fighter pilot looks down at the display and sees a symbol. One symbol, in one place, with a speed, a heading and a label saying what it is and whose side it is on. Behind that single symbol, several entirely different machines have reported entirely...
FAR Part 103: The Aircraft You Can Fly With No License
Share this story Almost everything that flies in the United States is wrapped in paperwork. A certificate for the pilot. A medical for the pilot. A registration for the aeroplane. An airworthiness certificate for the aeroplane, and an annual inspection to keep it....
Vickers Viscount: The World’s First Turboprop Airliner
Share this story On 29 July 1950, fourteen paying passengers boarded an aircraft at RAF Northolt, west of London, and flew to Paris Le Bourget. Nothing about the trip was unusual except the engines. It was the first scheduled airline flight by any turbine-powered...
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