Philippine Airlines Wants Both: 787s and A350s
When an airline picks a new long-haul jet, it usually picks a side. Boeing or Airbus. Dreamliner or A350. The engineering, the training, the spare parts, the pilot type-ratings — everything gets simpler when you commit to one family. Philippine Airlines has reportedly...
Boeing Came Out Swinging. Airbus Answered.
For most of the last five years, the Boeing-versus-Airbus delivery race wasn’t a race at all. Crisis after crisis — the 737 MAX grounding, a pandemic, a factory-quality reckoning after a door plug blew off a jet in flight — left Boeing limping while Airbus...
Flames on Zante: A Greek F-16 Belly-Lands
The holidaymakers on Zakynthos came for the beaches. On the afternoon of Jul. 9, 2026, they got something else entirely: a single-seat fighter jet sliding down the runway on its belly, trailing sparks, then wrapped in flame as fire crews rushed to smother it. The...
China’s J-36 Can Reach Taiwan — the F-47 Can’t
A fighter is only as dangerous as the distance it can cross. On paper, America’s new F-47 is the longest-legged fighter the United States has ever built — and over the one map that matters most, the Western Pacific, it still comes up short. China’s enormous new J-36...
The Air Force Goes Shopping for New Ways to Kill Drones
The aircraft that worries American air base commanders most in 2026 is not a Chinese stealth fighter or a Russian bomber. It is a battery-powered quadcopter that costs less than a used laptop, and there is nothing to stop a hostile one from buzzing the fence line of a...
Can Europe Hold the Sky if America Steps Back?
For three-quarters of a century, European security rested on a single quiet assumption: if the sky over the continent ever caught fire, American airpower would arrive to put it out. At this month’s NATO summit, the alliance’s top commander made clear that the...
A Tired B-52 Is Slowing America’s Next Nuclear Missile
The United States plans to rely on the AGM-181 to keep its airborne nuclear deterrent credible deep into the 2050s. To get there, it has exactly one aircraft cleared to test the missile: the B-52, a bomber whose last airframe rolled off the line in 1962. The newest...
Trump Ditches the New Air Force One, Flies the Old Jet Home
The most expensive gift in the history of aviation sat gleaming on the ramp in Turkey — and the President of the United States walked straight past it. On 8 July, barely a day after American bombs fell on Iran, Donald Trump boarded the old Air Force One, the...
Ford’s Super Hornets Wear Their War Paint
Fighter jets keep diaries. They keep them in stencilled paint, just below the cockpit rail, and if you know how to read them they will tell you exactly what kind of year the crews have had. On the Fourth of July, as the Super Hornets of Carrier Air Wing 8 recovered at...
T-7A Full-Rate Production Slips to 2029
Last week we walked you through the sustainment data fight simmering between Boeing and the Air Force over the T-7A Red Hawk. Seven days later, the Government Accountability Office showed up with receipts. GAO’s Weapon Systems Annual Assessment, released July 2...
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