Airbus RACER Invites NATO Pilots to Fly the Future
A helicopter that flies at 240 knots does not behave like a helicopter. It behaves like something entirely new — a machine caught between the rotary-wing world and the fixed-wing world, borrowing the best instincts from both. Airbus Helicopters has been proving...
Lufthansa’s A380 Gets a Luxury Rebirth
The superjumbo is not dead. It is, in fact, getting a rather glamorous facelift. On April 23, Lufthansa’s first retrofitted Airbus A380 took off from Munich bound for Los Angeles, carrying 68 passengers in an entirely redesigned business class cabin. The...
Missiles, Drones, Jamming: ICAO Warns Civilian Skies Are Under Threat
The head of the United Nations aviation agency stood before a room of airline executives, intelligence analysts, and government officials in Malta and said what many of them already feared: the skies are no longer safe in the way the industry has assumed for decades....
Air Canada’s A321XLR Brings Lie-Flat Seats to Single-Aisle Transatlantic
A narrowbody aircraft has no business offering lie-flat beds across the Atlantic. And yet here it is. On April 24, Air Canada took delivery of its first Airbus A321XLR in Hamburg — and with it, a cabin configuration that would have seemed absurd five years ago: 14...
Northrop Bets $2.5 Billion on Faster B-21 Production
Northrop Grumman is putting its own money where the Air Force’s bomber fleet is. The defence giant has committed $2.5 billion in company-funded investment to accelerate production of the B-21 Raider, the most advanced stealth bomber ever built, by 25 percent per...
Johnnie Johnson: Britain’s Top-Scoring Fighter Ace of World War II
Quick FactsNationalityBritish 🇬🇧Aerial Victories38 (highest confirmed British ace of WWII)Aircraft FlownSpitfire Mk.II through Mk.XIVWarsWorld War IIBorn / Died9 Mar 1915 – 30 Jan 2001 (age 85)Unit616 Sqn RAF, No. 144 Wing RCAF Supermarine Spitfire Mk. IX in the Air...
The Man Who Tied His Airship to a Lamppost and Went to Dinner at Maxim’s
On the morning of October 19, 1901, a small, open gondola suspended beneath a cigar-shaped hydrogen balloon rounded the Eiffel Tower at low altitude, straightened out over the Seine, and docked at the Saint-Cloud aerodrome in a time of 29 minutes and 30 seconds. The...
Gabby Gabreski: America’s Top Ace Over Europe and a Hero of Two Wars
Quick FactsNationalityAmerican 🇺🇸Aerial Victories34.5 (WWII) + 6.5 (Korea) = 41 totalAircraft FlownP-47 Thunderbolt, F-86 SabreWarsWorld War II (Europe), Korean WarBorn / Died28 Jan 1919 – 31 Jan 2002 (age 83)Unit56th Fighter Group (WWII), 51st Fighter Interceptor...
Wake Turbulence: The Invisible Danger Behind Every Landing
You can’t see it. You can’t hear it. Your instruments won’t warn you. But behind every aircraft that has ever flown, a pair of invisible horizontal tornadoes spin off the wingtips at speeds that can exceed 300 feet per second. If you fly through them...
XB-70 Valkyrie: Mach 3 and the Crash That Killed a Dream
At 70,000 feet, the North American XB-70 Valkyrie was the fastest, highest-flying bomber ever built. Two hundred and seventy feet of white-painted delta wing, six General Electric YJ93 engines producing 186,000 pounds of combined thrust, and a design speed of Mach...
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