The de Havilland Comet: The Beautiful Jet That Taught Us How Aircraft Break
The de Havilland Comet was the most beautiful airliner ever built. It was also the most deadly — and its failures saved more lives than any single aircraft in history. We’ve written about the Comet before — see our earlier piece on its legacy. This article...
XB-70 vs. Sukhoi T-4: The Mach 3 Race Nobody Won
In the late 1950s, both superpowers reached the same conclusion: the future of strategic bombing was speed. Build a bomber that flies at Mach 3 and nothing can catch it. No interceptor, no missile, no air defence system could touch an aircraft crossing the sky at...
The A321XLR Changes Everything for Transatlantic Flying
United Airlines has taken delivery of its first Airbus A321XLR — and with it, the promise that crossing the Atlantic in a narrowbody jet does not have to mean suffering through it. The aircraft, registered N64321, left Airbus’s Hamburg-Finkenwerder facility on...
Ravenstorm: Airbus Enters the Robot-Wingman Race
At ILA Berlin, Airbus pulled the covers off a long, dark shape with knife-thin wings and no cockpit — and gave Europe its clearest look yet at the robot fighter it wants to send to war alongside its pilots. The aircraft is the U-760 Ravenstorm, an uncrewed...
NASA’s X-59 Breaks the Sound Barrier for the First Time
At 43,400 feet over Edwards Air Force Base, the needle crossed Mach 1.1. No bang. No boom. Just a soft thump that most people on the ground wouldn’t notice. On 5 June 2026, NASA’s X-59 QueSST did what 53 years of regulation said commercial aircraft could...
Azul Doubles Down on the A330neo
While American carriers agonise over whether to order Airbus widebodies, a Brazilian airline has quietly answered the question for itself. Azul has signed for four more Airbus A330-900neos — doubling down on the jet that has become the backbone of its long-haul...
China’s Three-Engined Stealth Giant Breaks Cover
It has no tail, three engines, and a planform like a stingray crossed with a stealth bomber. It is the most radical-looking combat aircraft on Earth — and it is Chinese. Grainy photographs of Chengdu’s tailless giant, widely dubbed the J-36, keep leaking out of China,...
American May Ditch Boeing for an Airbus Surprise
American Airlines flies more aircraft than almost anyone on Earth, yet it has quietly backed itself into a corner over the ocean. Its long-haul order book has dwindled to just 19 jets. Now the airline is preparing to fix that — and the most interesting part of the...
The Strangest Aircraft Graveyards on Earth
Somewhere in the Arizona desert, 4,000 aircraft are parked in perfect rows under a sun that never stops shining. F-16s with their canopies sealed in white latex. B-52s guillotined into pieces under arms-reduction treaties, left in the open for satellites to verify....
The Rutan Voyager: Nine Days Without Landing
On 14 December 1986, a spindly aircraft made almost entirely of paper, glue, and carbon fibre wobbled down the runway at Edwards Air Force Base with so much fuel aboard that its wingtips dragged on the concrete, damaging the winglets. Nine days, three minutes, and 44...
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