LOT Embraer E170 Farewell: The World’s First E170 Operator Bows Out
Share this story On Friday 30 October 2026, an Embraer E170 registered SP-LDH flew from Warsaw to Vienna and back, and then LOT Polish Airlines took it out of service. It was the airline’s last E170, and with it LOT closed a story it had started on the very same...
Air Force One Flyover: Halloween Low Passes Startle Washington, DC
Share this story Just before a quarter to six on the evening of Thursday 29 October, a Boeing 747 came in low from the south over the White House South Lawn. Children in Halloween costumes looked up, President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump waved, and about...
Why Soyuz Lands on the Kazakh Steppe: Three Hours From Orbit to Zhezkazgan
Share this story Every Soyuz crew that comes home from the International Space Station ends the trip in the same place: the flat, empty steppe of central Kazakhstan, typically south-east of the town of Zhezkazgan. The region has been the Soviet and Russian landing...
Special Flight Permit vs Permit to Fly: FAA and EASA Compared
Share this story Somewhere this morning an aeroplane took off that does not meet its own type design. Perhaps its annual inspection lapsed three weeks ago. Perhaps an airworthiness directive has not been complied with, or a piece of equipment outside the minimum...
Part 103 Altitude Limit: Why Ultralights Have No Legal Ceiling
Share this story It is one of the most asked questions in American sport aviation, and almost every answer you will find online is wrong in the same interesting way. How high can you fly an ultralight without a licence? People reply with a number. Ten thousand feet,...
A, B, C and D Checks: Why the B Check Quietly Vanished
Share this story Everybody in aviation knows the letters. A check, B check, C check, D check, in rising order of seriousness, from an overnight once-over to the one where they take the aeroplane apart. It is one of the first things an enthusiast learns and one of the...
FAA Annual vs 100-Hour Inspection: Why Only an IA Can Sign
Share this story Two aeroplanes sit on the same ramp. Same type, same year, same engine, same avionics. One belongs to a doctor who flies it to see his grandchildren. The other belongs to a flight school and has a hundred hours put on it every eleven weeks by people...
FAA Form 8130-3: The Tag That Does Not Let You Fit the Part
Share this story A hydraulic actuator is cut out of a DC-10 that will never fly again. Eighteen months later the same actuator is bolted into an airliner carrying three hundred people, and everything about that is legal. The thing that makes it legal is a single sheet...
FAA Part 43 Appendix A: The 31 Jobs a Pilot May Legally Do
Share this story Ask a room full of aircraft owners what they are allowed to do to their own aeroplane and most will give you the same number. Thirty-two jobs, they will say. It is on the list, in Appendix A. Count them. There are thirty-one. The thirty-second was...
NASA Armstrong Director: B-1B Record Pilot Troy Asher Takes Over
Share this story In 2003, a US Air Force test pilot named Troy Asher flew a B-1B bomber to a string of world speed records. Twenty-five of them, according to NASA. On Thursday, 29 October 2026, NASA put the same pilot in charge of the place where America flies its...
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