Share this story From the air it looks like a filing system for aeroplanes. Row upon row of them, wingtip to wingtip, laid out across ten square kilometres of Arizona desert in lines so straight they look drawn. Bombers here. Fighters there. Transports over there....
Share this story Last week the Royal Air Force’s second E-7 Wedgetail flew out of Birmingham looking like somebody had forgotten to finish it. No roundels, no squadron markings, no grey. Just an unlovely metallic green from nose to tail. Almost every aircraft...
Share this story A reporter at Joint Base Andrews on Sunday evening asked President Trump a direct question: the Qatari jet he is now flying as Air Force One does not have antimissile defences, so why is he flying it? The answer confirmed what aviation and security...
Share this story Everyone knows who first broke the sound barrier: Chuck Yeager, October 1947, the orange Bell X-1, a rib strapped up with a broom handle. It is one of the great stories in aviation. But there is a second name that belongs beside it — a quiet engineer...
Share this story Ask anyone which airliner first broke the sound barrier and they will say Concorde. They will be wrong by seven years — and by one very ordinary-looking Douglas jetliner that most people have completely forgotten. On 21 August 1961, a standard Douglas...
Share this story Before there was radar, before there were reliable instruments, before anyone had crossed the United States without landing, there was a quiet Army lieutenant named John Macready — a man who spent the early 1920s collecting aviation...
Share this story At a thousand feet over Wiltshire, pulling out of a vertical dive at five times the force of gravity, Neil Williams heard a bang and felt the airframe lurch. His left wing had begun to fold up. In the next few seconds, the British aerobatic champion...
Share this story On the afternoon of 24 November 1971, a quiet man in a business suit walked up to the Northwest Orient counter in Portland, Oregon, and paid cash for a one-way ticket to Seattle. He gave his name as Dan Cooper. A few hours later he would step out of...
Share this story It was a calm, clear night over the Indian Ocean on 24 June 1982 when the passengers of British Airways Flight 9 noticed something strange: a glow along the wings, and puffs of smoke curling into the cabin that smelled of sulphur. Up front, the crew...
Share this story Most airlines paint their jets. Taiwan’s STARLUX hired one of the world’s most famous artists to turn an Airbus A350-1000 into a mirror-finished flying sculpture — and on 15 July, it flew the thing across the Pacific to Phoenix.Flight JX026...
Share this story Two and a half weeks after it flew its very first paying passengers, Saudi Arabia’s brand-new airline has been handed the keys to the world’s second-biggest aviation market. Riyadh Air is going to China.The Civil Aviation Administration of China has...
Share this story Eighty years ago, a fat-bellied flying boat called the PBY Catalina rescued downed airmen, sank submarines and crossed oceans on missions that lasted a full day and night. Its type certificate has quietly survived ever since. Now someone wants to...
Recent Comments