Share this story Fifty-two minutes after leaving New York, the pilots of Swissair Flight 111 noticed an unusual smell in the cockpit. It was the evening of 2 September 1998, the MD-11 was cruising at 33,000 feet over the Atlantic south of Nova Scotia, and nothing else...
Share this story “Flying under the radar” is one of the few pieces of aviation slang that means exactly what it says. It is not a metaphor about avoiding attention. It is a statement about geometry, and the geometry is unforgiving in both directions. Ask...
Share this story On the night of 10 March 1968, nineteen American airmen were living on top of a mountain in a country where, officially, there were no American troops at all. Phou Pha Thi rises more than a mile above northeastern Laos, with sheer cliffs on one side....
Share this story On 30 October 1963 the crew of USS Forrestal watched a four-engined transport with a 132-foot wingspan come down their deck. It had no tailhook. It had no catapult attachment. The ship’s island cleared its wingtip by about fifteen feet. It...
Share this story Milan’s Malpensa Airport now officially carries the name of Silvio Berlusconi. At a ceremony in the arrivals area of Terminal 1 on Friday 25 September, the former prime minister’s family and senior government figures unveiled the new name,...
Share this story Nobody likes reaching for it, but everyone expects it to be there. From 1 October, airBaltic passengers will no longer find a sick bag in the seat pocket in front of them. The Latvian airline, now restructuring under US Chapter 11 bankruptcy...
Share this story Qatar Airways has quietly ended an era. The Doha carrier has retired its Airbus A330 passenger fleet, Reuters reported on 25 September, and it is sending some of the pilots who flew them to Rwanda. The move is a direct consequence of the Iran war. Jet...
Share this story Latvia wants to hit targets far beyond its borders, and it has picked the weapon. On 25 September, President Edgars Rinkēvičs visited Anduril Industries in California, met founder Palmer Luckey, and said he was looking forward to completing the...
Share this story GPS jamming is usually a story from the Baltic, the Black Sea or the Middle East. In the early hours of Friday 25 September, it was a story from Los Angeles. Crews on at least two United Airlines flights told air traffic controllers that GPS...
Share this story Airbus has a date. On Tuesday 29 September at 10:20 local time, weather and systems permitting, the first A350F freighter will take off from Toulouse for the first time. Airbus will stream the flight live on X. The aircraft, MSN700, registered F-WXLD,...
Share this story The F-16 has seen heavy action against Iranian air defences in Operation Epic Fury. Its existing self-protection gear has coped, but the US Air Force knows that China’s air defences are a different league. So this week it put another $87.4...
Share this story Sicily’s busiest airport has shut again. On Saturday 26 September, ash from Mount Etna’s North-East Crater forced Catania-Fontanarossa Airport to stop all flights, first until the afternoon and then until noon on Sunday 27 September. A...
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