Share this story At 2:38 a.m. on January 17, 1991, eight AH-64 Apache helicopters crossed into Iraqi airspace at treetop height. Their mission: destroy two early-warning radar stations that would blind Iraq to what was coming next. Within minutes, the stations were...
Share this story The de Havilland Comet was the most beautiful airliner ever built. It was also the most deadly — and its failures saved more lives than any single aircraft in history. We’ve written about the Comet before — see our earlier piece on its legacy....
Share this story A pilot pulls the handle. Two and a half seconds later, they are floating under a parachute. In between, they have been subjected to forces that would kill an unrestrained human being — and the engineering that makes it survivable is among the most...
Share this story In the late 1950s, both superpowers reached the same conclusion: the future of strategic bombing was speed. Build a bomber that flies at Mach 3 and nothing can catch it. No interceptor, no missile, no air defence system could touch an aircraft...
Share this story United Airlines has taken delivery of its first Airbus A321XLR — and with it, the promise that crossing the Atlantic in a narrowbody jet does not have to mean suffering through it. The aircraft, registered N64321, left Airbus’s...
Share this story At 43,400 feet over Edwards Air Force Base, the needle crossed Mach 1.1. No bang. No boom. Just a soft thump that most people on the ground wouldn’t notice. On 5 June 2026, NASA’s X-59 QueSST did what 53 years of regulation said commercial...
Share this story While American carriers agonise over whether to order Airbus widebodies, a Brazilian airline has quietly answered the question for itself. Azul has signed for four more Airbus A330-900neos — doubling down on the jet that has become the backbone of its...
Share this story It has no tail, three engines, and a planform like a stingray crossed with a stealth bomber. It is the most radical-looking combat aircraft on Earth — and it is Chinese. Grainy photographs of Chengdu’s tailless giant, widely dubbed the J-36, keep...
Share this story American Airlines flies more aircraft than almost anyone on Earth, yet it has quietly backed itself into a corner over the ocean. Its long-haul order book has dwindled to just 19 jets. Now the airline is preparing to fix that — and the most...
Share this story Somewhere in the Arizona desert, 4,000 aircraft are parked in perfect rows under a sun that never stops shining. F-16s with their canopies sealed in white latex. B-52s guillotined into pieces under arms-reduction treaties, left in the open for...
Share this story On 14 December 1986, a spindly aircraft made almost entirely of paper, glue, and carbon fibre wobbled down the runway at Edwards Air Force Base with so much fuel aboard that its wingtips dragged on the concrete, damaging the winglets. Nine days, three...
Share this story No aircraft in American history has been hated, redeemed, and mourned quite like the F-111 Aardvark. Born from Robert McNamara’s disastrous TFX programme — an attempt to force the Air Force and Navy to share a single airframe — it arrived...
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