Turbojet vs Turbofan vs Turboprop: How Jet Engines Differ
Share this story Walk along the apron of a busy airport and you pass three very different-looking machines. A regional airliner with two big propellers. A widebody whose engine intakes are so wide you could almost stand up inside them. And, if you are lucky, a slim...
AAA Rescue Helicopter Hit by Laser in Aargau, Three Crew Hurt
Share this story The crew were seconds from touching down at a medical emergency when the cockpit filled with green light. On Saturday evening, 24 October 2026, a rescue helicopter of AAA Alpine Air Ambulance was hit by a laser beam on its final approach to a landing...
Aeroelastic Flutter: The Failure Mode That Sets Every Speed Limit
Share this story On 19 October 2026 the Federal Aviation Administration issued airworthiness directive 2026-20-14, ordering operators of 1,987 American-registered Boeing 737NGs to measure the free play in their horizontal stabiliser pivot hinges and jackscrews. The...
Formation Flying Explained: How Pilots Hold Position Inches Apart
Share this story Over Baltimore’s Inner Harbor on 15 June 2012, a US Navy photographer captured an image most people would rather not think about. The canopy of the Blue Angels’ left wingman’s F/A-18 Hornet sat approximately 18 inches from the...
Link 16 Explained: How Allied Jets Share One Air Picture
Share this story Look at the tactical display of a modern F-16 and you will see aircraft its own radar has never touched. A contact a hundred miles away, already labelled hostile. A friendly four-ship on the far side of a mountain range. A tanker orbit, a ship, a...
Project Genetrix: The 1956 Spy Balloons That Drifted Over the USSR
Share this story On 10 January 1956, ground crews in Turkey and West Germany let go of the first nine of hundreds of giant plastic balloons. Each one carried a camera gondola about the size of a refrigerator. The cover story said they were studying the weather. In...
Airborne Weather Radar: How Pilots See Storms Through the Nose
Share this story Behind the painted nose cone of almost every airliner sits a flat disc about the size of a dustbin lid, nodding up and down and sweeping left and right, all flight long. It is the weather radar, and on a summer night over the Alps or the Gulf of...
Dihedral and Anhedral: Why Some Wings Tilt Up and Others Droop
Share this story Stand at the end of a runway and watch an airliner come in to land, and you will see its wings rise gently from the fuselage into a shallow V. Now watch a US Marine Corps Harrier hover over the same runway. Its wings do the opposite: they droop from...
Alaska Airlines 261: How a Lubrication Interval Grew Sevenfold
Share this story Every aeroplane has a part you have never heard of that is holding more of your life in its hands than the engines are. On a McDonnell Douglas MD-83, that part was a steel screw turning inside a nut, mounted near the top of the vertical fin. The screw...
Musashi Sinking 1944: How Carrier Planes Killed a Super-Battleship
Share this story At 10:27 on the morning of 24 October 1944, eight dive bombers from the carrier USS Intrepid tipped over above the Sibuyan Sea and went for the biggest target any of their crews had ever seen. Below them steamed Musashi, one of the two heaviest...
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