The Strangest Medical Disqualifiers for Pilot Licenses: From Color Blindness to Snoring
Most people assume that becoming a pilot requires good eyesight and a steady hand. That much is true. What most people don’t realize is just how deep the medical rabbit hole goes — and how some of the conditions that can ground you are genuinely surprising. From...
Eric ‘Winkle’ Brown: 487 Aircraft Types and 2,407 Carrier Landings
The number is so large it seems invented. Four hundred and eighty-seven. That is how many different types of aircraft Captain Eric “Winkle” Brown flew during his lifetime — a record that stands to this day and will almost certainly never be broken. For...
Noel Wien: The Barnstormer Who Brought Airlines to Alaska by Biplane
In 1924, a 25-year-old barnstormer from Wisconsin arrived in Fairbanks, Alaska, in a World War I surplus Hisso Standard J1 biplane with an open cockpit. The ground temperature was -40°F in winter. The nearest mechanic was hundreds of miles away. Instrument flying, as...
The XB-70 Valkyrie: When a PR Photo Shoot Killed the Fastest Bomber Ever Built
The North American XB-70 Valkyrie was supposed to be the future of strategic bombing — a six-engine colossus that could outrun anything in the sky at three times the speed of sound. Instead, it became one of aviation’s most expensive might-have-beens, and its...
$12 Billion Burned, Zero Passengers Carried: The eVTOL Cash Bonfire
Twelve billion dollars. Gone. The top ten eVTOL companies have collectively burned through $12 billion in investor capital — four times what was lost during the very light jet craze of the 2000s, and more than Boeing earned even in its most profitable year. Not one of...
The Fairey Rotodyne: Britain’s Helicopter Airliner That Was Killed by Noise
City to city, with no airports. Take off from a small concrete pad in central London, climb vertically, transition forward, cruise at 190 miles per hour, descend, land on a concrete pad in central Paris. No taxi, no train, no airport security. In June 1959 a...
When a Helicopter Picks Up an Airliner: The Mi-26 Sling-Lift That Defies Belief
The photograph looks fake. A short-fuselage Soviet-era twin-engine airliner — a Tupolev Tu-134, the workhorse of Aeroflot domestic routes for thirty years — is hanging in midair beneath a single helicopter. The Tu-134 weighs about 28 tonnes empty. It is some...
The U.S. Navy Built Two Real Flying Aircraft Carriers — and Then Lost Them Both
The most ambitious naval aviation concept the United States ever fielded was not the nuclear-powered supercarrier. It was a 785-foot helium airship with an interior hangar bay full of biplane fighters that could be launched and recovered in flight. There were two of...
80 Years Ago Today, the DHC-1 Chipmunk Took Off and Taught Half the World to Fly
On 22 May 1946, in a hangar at Downsview Airport just outside Toronto, a small all-metal trainer painted in pale yellow finished its last ground checks, taxied to the runway, and lifted off into Canadian spring weather. The pilot was Pat Fillingham, a test pilot...
Riyadh Air Will Fly Its First Passenger on 1 July — Saudi Arabia’s Boldest Bet
For three years, the world’s aviation press has watched Riyadh Air with the kind of attention usually reserved for a celebrity divorce. The airline has spent more on launch advertising than most mid-size carriers spend on a fleet. It has cut deals with Boeing and...
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