Share this story Somewhere over the North Atlantic on Sunday evening, a small object in a business-class seat pocket did what airlines now fear more than almost anything else: it began to smoke. The device was a passenger’s power bank. The aircraft was a SWISS...
Share this story On a brilliantly clear March morning in 1966, a BOAC Boeing 707 lifted off from Tokyo bound for Hong Kong, and its crew did something generous and entirely human: they turned toward Mount Fuji so their passengers could photograph Japan’s perfect...
Share this story It was three days after Christmas, 1972. A brand-new Lockheed L-1011 TriStar was on final approach to Miami with 176 people aboard when a tiny green light — the one confirming the nose landing gear was down and locked — failed to come on....
Share this story On a clear night in April 1979, a Boeing 727 cruising at 39,000 feet over Michigan suddenly rolled onto its back and fell out of the sky, spinning through two complete rolls as it plunged toward the ground. Sixty-three seconds later it had dropped...
Share this story A Boeing 747 does not simply fall out of the sky. But on the night of 19 February 1985, over the Pacific, one did — rolling onto its side and plunging nearly six miles toward the ocean with 274 people aboard. That any of them lived is down to a...
Share this story Thirteen minutes after leaving Birmingham on the morning of 10 June 1990, the pilots of British Airways Flight 5390 had loosened their shoulder straps and set breakfast on their laps. Then, with a bang like a bomb, the left cockpit windscreen tore...
Share this story Cut a hole in the side of a jumbo jet, point a two-and-a-half-metre telescope out of it, and fly the whole contraption into the stratosphere at night. It sounds like a terrible idea. For twelve years, it was one of the most productive telescopes in...
Share this story In the late 1920s, a young man named Willard Custer watched a windstorm peel the roof off a barn. The roof did not slide forward and lift like an aircraft; it simply rose straight up as the wind screamed over it. Custer had a revelation that would...
Share this story Imagine a cargo plane that works like a truck and trailer. It lands, drops off a fully loaded box, clips on an empty one, and is airborne again in minutes — while ground crews unload the box it left behind. In 1950, Fairchild actually built that...
Share this story Europe’s most ambitious fighter project spent years tearing itself apart. Now, from the wreckage, an unexpected suitor has stepped forward: India.On 7 August 2026, India’s Ministry of Defence confirmed to Parliament that New Delhi has...
Share this story Airlines love a big number. Turkish Airlines just posted one that is hard to argue with: on Sunday, 2 August 2026, the group flew 352,715 passengers in a single day — the busiest day in its 93-year history. That figure is not one airline but two...
Share this story Everyone remembers the Airbus A380 as the great double-decker of the skies. Almost nobody remembers that France built one two generations earlier. In 1953, Air France put into service a broad-shouldered, four-engined airliner with two full passenger...
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