The Taraia Object on Nikumaroro was likely a pile of large trees, not Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Electra, the Purdue-backed expedition announced.
USAF Test Pilot School Brings Back Water Landings in Amphibians
The USAF Test Pilot School has brought water landings back, with Class 26A flying the Icon A5 and Lake Buccaneer amphibians in its QE program.
LATAM A320 Engine Fire in Lima: Passengers Off Before Take-off
LATAM A320 engine fire at Lima: flight LA2302 to Piura stopped before take-off, passengers unhurt. What we know and how A320 fire protection works.
Ukraine Drone Evacuation: Wounded Soldier Flown Off the Front Line
Ukraine drone evacuation: the 92nd Assault Brigade says a Gurzuf hexacopter flew a wounded soldier off the front line. The world-first claim is unverified.
APKWS Kits: Pentagon Locks In Up to 25,000 a Year
The Pentagon and BAE Systems agree a framework to buy up to 25,000 APKWS kits a year for seven years, the cheap laser-guided rocket now hunting drones.
Patriot Interceptor Shortage: How Many Missiles the Iran War Used
The war with Iran burned through more than half of America’s Patriot interceptors, according to estimates by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Rebuilding will take years. Here are the real numbers, and why the “19 years of purchases” figure going round does not add up.
North Atlantic Tracks: How Airliners Actually Cross the Ocean
Share this story Somewhere over the middle of the North Atlantic, a few hundred airliners are flying through airspace where nobody can see them. There is no radar out there. For most of the crossing there is no VHF radio either. The nearest controller is in Prestwick...
Airline Fuel Reserves: What the FAA and EASA Actually Demand
Share this story A Boeing 747-8 holds 238,610 litres of fuel. Boeing prints the figure in its own airport planning document, to the litre, alongside the 63,034 US gallons and 191,565 kilogrammes that are the same quantity in other clothes. It is the number search...
SyberJet SJ36 Mockup Unveiled: A Mach 0.88 Light Jet Promise
Share this story In Las Vegas today, on the eve of NBAA-BACE, SyberJet Aircraft is pulling the covers off a full-scale mockup of the SJ36 at Henderson Executive Airport. It is a nine-seat light jet that, on paper, would fly faster and farther than anything else in its...
Sonobuoys and MAD: How Patrol Aircraft Hunt Submarines
Share this story A submarine's whole purpose is to disappear. It hides beneath hundreds of metres of dark, noisy water, moving slowly and quietly. Finding one from an aircraft flying overhead sounds almost impossible. Yet maritime patrol crews have been doing it since...
Four-Engine Airliners: Why the 747, A380 and A340 Are Vanishing
Share this story On Monday morning, Lufthansa flew its last Airbus A340-600 passenger service into Frankfurt. The Boeing 747 has been out of production since 2022. The last Airbus A380 was delivered in 2021. In barely five years, the four-engined long-haul airliner...
Bomb Threat on a Plane: What Pilots and Crews Actually Do
Share this story On Sunday night, an Austrian Airlines A320 flying from Tel Aviv to Vienna received a bomb threat, diverted to Sofia under a Bulgarian MiG-29 escort, and landed safely. Nothing was found. That is how almost all of these end. But the crew could not know...
Lavochkin La-5: The Soviet Fighter Saved by a Radial Engine
Share this story In the spring of 1942, Semyon Lavochkin was in trouble. His LaGG-3 fighter had a poor reputation at the front, it had cost him Stalin's favour, and the factories building it were being switched over to Yakovlev fighters. His design bureau was working...
R34 Airship: The First Return Flight Across the Atlantic, 1919
Share this story In the small hours of 2 July 1919, at East Fortune in Scotland, the order came to walk her out. Ground crews hauled a 643-foot hydrogen airship out of its shed into a cold, misty north-easterly wind. On board were around 30 men, a kitten called...
Samora Machel’s Tu-134: The Mbuzini Crash, 40 Years On
Share this story It was a clear night over the Lebombo Mountains, with ten kilometres of visibility and only scattered cloud. At 21:21 on 19 October 1986, a Tupolev Tu-134 carrying the President of Mozambique flew into a hillside at Mbuzini, just inside South Africa...
San Jose Plane Crash: Cessna Cardinal Nosedives Onto an Expressway
Share this story It was a little after three on Saturday afternoon in East San Jose when a small propeller plane came down nose-first onto the roadway near Capitol Expressway and Excalibur Drive. The aircraft crumpled. Somehow, all three people inside survived: two...
Salt Lake City’s MiG-21 Will Be Scrapped at The Leonardo
Share this story For ten years, a Cold War fighter hung in the air over downtown Salt Lake City. Visitors to The Leonardo looked up and saw a former Polish Air Force MiG-21, red-and-white checkerboard on its tail, flying above a gleaming Convair C-131 Samaritan. Now...