Share this story Germany builds a great deal of aircraft structure. Fuselage sections, wings, cabins and engines leave German factories every day. What it has not done for a very long time is design, certify, assemble and support a complete airliner of its own. On 29...
Share this story Volotea built its business on the routes nobody else wanted: Nantes to Palma, Bilbao to Athens, Verona to Catania. Small cities, medium-sized airports, very orange-and-white checkerboard tails. On 29 September 2026, the Spanish low-cost airline asked...
Share this story Toulouse has seen a great many first flights, but few in a paint scheme that looks like a cardboard box. On 29 September 2026, the first Airbus A350F, MSN700, registered F-WXLD, lifted off from Toulouse-Blagnac in its brown test livery with bright...
Share this story At 9:14 on the morning of 12 November 2001, American Airlines Flight 587 lifted off from New York’s John F. Kennedy airport bound for Santo Domingo. Many of the 251 passengers were Dominican New Yorkers going home. About 105 seconds later the...
Share this story At 15:45 on Tuesday, 2 October 2001, Swissair chairman and CEO Mario Corti stood in front of the cameras and announced that the airline would stop flying. By then, jets carrying the Swiss cross were already sitting on aprons from Zurich to New York,...
Share this story Ninety-seven years ago this week, on the afternoon of 30 September 1929, a German car heir strapped himself into a pod under a glider wing, alongside sixteen gunpowder rockets, lit them and shot into the sky over Frankfurt. Fritz von Opel stayed up...
Share this story The President of the United States has Air Force One. The Pope, head of a state of less than half a square kilometre, has no air force, no airline and no airport. Yet he flies more than most heads of state, and when two French Rafales formed up on his...
Share this story Every airline take-off has a moment when the pilot’s choice disappears. Before it, a crew that sees a fire warning or loses an engine can pull the thrust levers back and stop on the runway. After it, the same crew must keep going and take the...
Share this story Twelve years after Air Algérie flight 5017 fell out of the sky over northern Mali, a French court has named someone responsible. On 28 September 2026, the Paris Criminal Court found Spanish charter airline Swiftair guilty of involuntary manslaughter...
Share this story Boeing looked close to certifying its biggest 737. Then a software problem got in the way. On Monday, 28 September, FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said the agency would hold off on certifying the 737 MAX 10 until it understands a newly disclosed...
Share this story Munich’s runways are 4,000 metres long. On 15 August 2026, a fully loaded Vietnam Airlines Boeing 787-9 used all of it, and then some. Flight VN34 to Hanoi left the ground from the grass beyond the end of the runway, clipped the approach lights...
Share this story Business jets are built to be quiet, smooth and economical. So a photograph of a Dassault Falcon 20 with a long cone of flame blasting out of one engine looks like a joke or a Photoshop. It is neither. In the late 1980s one Falcon 20, registered...
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