114 Rafale Deal: India Expects a Decision by Year-End
Share this story India’s biggest fighter deal in a generation has a deadline. Defence Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh said on 1 October that the bids for 114 more Dassault Rafale jets for the Indian Air Force are being evaluated, and that New Delhi expects to reach...
Rafale Loyal Wingman: France Plans First Crewed-Uncrewed Flight in 2028
Share this story France has put a date on its first robot wingman. In 2028 the French Air and Space Force plans to fly a Rafale together with an uncrewed collaborative combat aircraft, a so-called loyal wingman, in a first crewed-uncrewed test flight. The plan was...
Erling Haaland Sues Norwegian Air Over a Ponytail on a Plane
Share this story For more than two decades, Norwegian Air Shuttle has flown other people’s faces around Europe. Greta Garbo has gazed out from the fin of a Boeing 737-800. Sonja Henie, Thor Heyerdahl and Edvard Munch have taken their turns up there too. This...
RAF A400M Atlas: £190m to Get 13 of 22 Aircraft Ready Each Day
Share this story The Royal Air Force owns 22 A400M Atlas transports. On a typical day, ten of them are fully mission-capable. That is the baseline the Ministry of Defence itself published on 1 October, when it extended Airbus’s contract to maintain the RAF A400M...
Italian F-35B Gun Pod: First Sighting on a Non-US F-35
Share this story The jet came down the approach to Decimomannu with its gear out and a stranger under its belly. On the centreline of an Italian Air Force F-35B coded 32-14 hung a slim, angular fairing: the GPU-9/A gun pod, the only gun available to the short take-off...
Rafale for Ukraine: France Starts Training Ukrainian Pilots
Share this story France has moved from promising Rafales to preparing the people who will fly them. Speaking to franceinfo on 29 September, France’s Minister for Europe Benjamin Haddad confirmed that Paris is in talks with Kyiv about sending Rafale fighters to...
AnimaWings Files for Insolvency After Grounding All Six A220s
Share this story On Tuesday, AnimaWings pulled six of its eight aircraft out of service. On Wednesday, it went to court. The Romanian airline filed for insolvency with the Bucharest Tribunal on 30 September 2026, one day after grounding its entire fleet of Airbus...
EASA Warns Airlines Off Part of Saudi Arabia’s Jeddah FIR
Share this story On 30 September 2026 the European Union Aviation Safety Agency published a two-page document that will quietly rearrange a lot of flight plans. It is called CZIB-2026-09, its subject line is simply Airspace of Saudi Arabia, and it tells European...
Sea Venom and NSM: Royal Navy Sinks Ex-USS Klakring
Share this story The sea off the Outer Hebrides in late September is the colour of wet slate, and roughly 150 nautical miles out into it sat a 43-year-old American frigate with nobody aboard. The former USS Klakring had been towed across the Atlantic from Philadelphia...
Volotea Files for Creditor Protection: Fleet to Shrink From 44 Jets
Share this story Volotea built its business on the routes nobody else wanted: Nantes to Palma, Bilbao to Athens, Verona to Catania. Small cities, medium-sized airports, very orange-and-white checkerboard tails. On 29 September 2026, the Spanish low-cost airline asked...
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