The Friendly Jet Trainer That Went to War
Share this story Most fast jets seat their crew one behind the other, the passenger staring at the back of the pilot’s helmet. The BAC Jet Provost and its armed cousin, the BAC Strikemaster, do it differently. In these aircraft you sit shoulder to shoulder with...
Finland’s Hornets Begin Their Final Countdown
Share this story For thirty years, the sound of Finland’s air defence has been the twin-engine howl of the F/A-18 Hornet. Now the clock on that sound has started ticking down. As Finland’s first F-35A Lightning II stealth fighters move through training in...
Sixteen Months in Prison, Then 306 Lives
Share this story In November 1983, a 31-year-old Quebec pilot landed a light aircraft by himself at a small airfield in Georgia. It was loaded with marijuana, flown up from Jamaica. Police were waiting.He was sentenced to five years and served sixteen months. He...
The World’s Militaries, Counted
Share this story In 2025 the world spent $2,887 billion on its armed forces. That is the highest figure SIPRI has ever recorded, the eleventh consecutive annual increase, and it works out at $352 for every person alive.Below is what that money bought, counted as...
Why Almost Every Airliner Is White
Share this story Stand at any airport window and count the aircraft. Almost all of them are white, with a tail and a bit of branding to tell them apart. Airlines spend fortunes on brand identity, and then paint their single most visible asset the same colour as...
Why Runways Change Their Numbers
Share this story In 2009, Fairbanks International Airport in Alaska closed a runway, sent out crews, and repainted the enormous white numbers at both ends. Runway 1L–19R became runway 2L–20R.Nothing had been built. Nothing had moved. The concrete was in...
The Hole in Your Aircraft Window
Share this story Next time you get a window seat, look at the bottom of the window. There is a hole in it. A real one, drilled straight through, about the size of a pinhead.Most people who notice it assume one of two things: that it is damage, or that it is there to...
Three Minutes to the Hudson
Share this story Ninety seconds before he put an Airbus A320 into a river, Chesley Sullenberger said something entirely ordinary. It was 3:26 in the afternoon on 15 January 2009, the aircraft was climbing away from LaGuardia, and he looked left out of the window....
The Galaxy That Fell Out of Saigon
Share this story The cargo compartment of a C-5A Galaxy is the size of a small warehouse. On the afternoon of 4 April 1975, the crew at Tan Son Nhut filled the lower deck of one with cardboard boxes, and into the boxes they put babies — two and three to a box,...
The Iran War’s $4.3 Billion Airline Bill
Share this story Last year the Middle East’s airlines made $7.2 billion. This year they are on track to lose $4.3 billion. That is an eleven-and-a-half-billion-dollar swing in twelve months, and it makes the Gulf the only major airline region on earth expected...
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