Share this story On 15 March 1975, a hang glider pilot stood on the frozen surface of a Wisconsin lake with a biplane glider on his shoulders and a small two-stroke engine buzzing behind him. There was no hill and no sea breeze to lift him. He opened the throttle,...
Share this story Positive rate of climb. Gear up. The pilot moves the lever, the hydraulics whine, and a few seconds later the wheels should be tucked away behind closed doors. Then a warning appears instead, or a gear leg simply stays where it is, hanging in the...
Share this story The boarding music is still playing when it drifts down the aisle: a stale, cheesy, slightly chemical smell. Crews have a name for it. They call it “dirty socks”, sometimes “wet dog”. Most passengers wrinkle their noses and...
Share this story A flying boat that sank U-boats off Iceland. A homebuilt biplane that took one Washington State couple more than a decade. A powered hang glider that lifted off a frozen Wisconsin lake in 1975 and started a movement. They now share a roof in Oshkosh....
Share this story Boeing rolled its longest 737 out of the Renton factory in November 2019. Nearly seven years later, the jet still lacks the one thing it needs to carry a paying passenger: an FAA type certificate. That wait may now be measured in days. On Friday, 16...
Share this story Ten minutes out of Zurich, a fully fuelled Airbus A340 bound for the Caribbean stops climbing and starts drawing circles in the sky north of Aarau. Somewhere beneath the fuselage, one set of wheels has refused to fold away. For the crew of Edelweiss...
Share this story Ask anyone in American aviation how you get hired by an airline and you will be given a number. Fifteen hundred hours. It is the single best-known figure in the industry, it is quoted as though it were a law of physics, and almost every part of it is...
Share this story There is a helicopter you can buy, fly away from your own field, and operate in American airspace without a pilot certificate, without a medical, without registration, and without any airworthiness approval whatsoever. It is not a loophole and it is...
Share this story A fighter pilot looks down at the display and sees a symbol. One symbol, in one place, with a speed, a heading and a label saying what it is and whose side it is on. Behind that single symbol, several entirely different machines have reported entirely...
Share this story Almost everything that flies in the United States is wrapped in paperwork. A certificate for the pilot. A medical for the pilot. A registration for the aeroplane. An airworthiness certificate for the aeroplane, and an annual inspection to keep it....
Share this story On 29 July 1950, fourteen paying passengers boarded an aircraft at RAF Northolt, west of London, and flew to Paris Le Bourget. Nothing about the trip was unusual except the engines. It was the first scheduled airline flight by any turbine-powered...
Share this story Most pilots today learn on aeroplanes with a nosewheel. They taxi like a shopping trolley that wants to go straight. Then one day they climb into a Piper Cub, a Super Decathlon or a P-51 Mustang, and discover that the little wheel at the back changes...
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