Share this story Take a window seat over the wing of a Boeing 737 Next Generation and look just outboard of the engine. A short row of small blades stands on the upper skin, each angled across the airflow like a miniature keel. Passengers photograph them, post the...
Share this story On 7 July 1999, Ensign John Gay was on the highest deck of the aircraft carrier USS Constellation when an F/A-18C Hornet tore past wrapped in a white bell of cloud. The nose and canopy were clear. The rest of the jet seemed to be bursting out of a...
Share this story The Wellington rolled to a stop at an airfield in East Anglia, and the ground crew went looking for its pilot. They would not believe it was the young woman who had climbed down from the cockpit. “They actually went inside the aeroplane and...
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...
Share this story A fair-haired woman in a flowing red dress flies across the nose of Virgin Atlantic’s newest jet, a Union flag streaming beside her. Look closer and the underside of her skirt is tartan. Beneath her feet are two words: Viva Forever. Virgin...
Share this story It took about five minutes for El Al to sell every seat on its first two rescue flights out of Dubai. By Friday morning, both flights were cancelled. Landing approval for Israeli airlines in Dubai had been withdrawn overnight, El Al said. Israeli...
Share this story On a single-pilot flight, one medical emergency in the left seat can leave everyone else aboard in an aircraft none of them can fly. Garmin’s answer, unveiled in 2019, is Autoland: press a button and the avionics handle everything from choosing...
Share this story At about 7:45 pm on Wednesday 30 September, a REACH Air Medical Services EC135 air ambulance lifted off from the Pebbly Beach heliport on Santa Catalina Island, about a mile from Avalon, carrying a patient to the mainland. Within moments it was in the...
Share this story For decades, some pilots who flew near big thunderstorms at night came home with a story they were reluctant to tell. Above the storm, well above the cloud tops where lightning has no business being, they had seen flashes of light shooting upward into...
Share this story Somewhere on the upper surface of every B-2 Spirit is a small round window that has nothing to do with the crew. Behind it sits a telescope that looks for stars. While the bomber flies, that system measures the angles to known stars and uses them to...
Share this story On the morning of 13 April 2019, the widest aircraft ever built rolled down the runway at Mojave in California, lifted two fuselages and six engines off the ground, and flew for two and a half hours. Its wings stretched 385 feet from tip to tip, wider...
Share this story A radar-guided missile announces itself. The radar that guides it lights up the target aircraft, and a radar warning receiver hears it. A heat-seeking missile gives no such courtesy. It homes passively on the heat of an engine, and the first sign of...
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