Share this story Neel Kearby was the man who proved the P-47 Thunderbolt could fight in the Pacific. Many pilots there thought the heavy fighter was hopeless against nimble Japanese aircraft. Kearby, commander of the 348th Fighter Group, worked out how to use its...
Share this story America’s air traffic controllers are finally getting the raise Congress approved for them in April. On Friday, 16 October, the US Department of Transportation and the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) announced a deal that...
Share this story It does not look like a doomsday aircraft yet. Tail number 510 is a plain grey Lockheed Martin C-130J-30 Super Hercules, four propellers and a long fuselage, sitting on the ramp at Marietta, Georgia. But on 15 October the US Navy accepted it as the...
Share this story Somewhere over the Mojave Desert, in the first week of October, a Raptor pilot did something no fighter pilot had done before: sending a new mission plan to a combat drone flying alongside, and letting the drone take it from there. The US Air Force...
Share this story Behind the two pilot seats on almost every airliner there is a small fold-down seat, sometimes two. It is called the jumpseat, and it is one of the most coveted seats in aviation. Off-duty pilots ride it to get to work. FAA inspectors use it to check...
Share this story Every new American weapon, from a heat-seeking missile to a stealth fighter, has to be shot, dropped, jammed or flown somewhere before it goes to war. For the past 80 years, that somewhere has mostly been a handful of enormous fenced-off deserts in...
Share this story Presidents usually announce military bases with a press release and a map. Donald Trump announced this one from a rally stage. Speaking at the Majestic Valley Arena in Kalispell, Montana, on Wednesday evening, 14 October, he told the crowd that the...
Share this story Air traffic controllers spend their whole careers talking to cockpits they almost never get to sit in. That is about to change again. On Wednesday, 14 October, the FAA announced that it is bringing back its Flight Deck Training program, which lets...
Share this story Few things in aviation look as dramatic as a Concorde going around: the needle nose drooped, the delta wing pitched up, four Olympus engines spooling up, and the whole aircraft climbing away from the runway it was about to land on. A clip of exactly...
Share this story On the evening of 13 October 2026, a damaged fibre-optic cable near Houston caused delays at George Bush Intercontinental. The FAA stopped flights bound for the airport from taking off between about 18:30 and 20:00 local time, and the problem rippled...
Share this story The US Air Force’s cheap, autonomous successor to the MQ-9 Reaper is supposed to be flying in operational form within two years. Speaking on a panel at the AUSA conference in Washington on 14 October 2026, Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said...
Share this story Eleven years after the F-35C made its first arrested landing on a Nimitz-class carrier, the Navy’s stealth fighter has finally trapped aboard the ship class that is supposed to carry it into the 2070s. On 13 October 2026, an F-35C from the...
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