The YF-107 "Ultra Sabre": The Century Series Fighter Nobody Remembers
On 10 September 1956, in the high desert above Edwards Air Force Base, North American Aviation's chief test pilot Bob Baker pushed the throttle of an aircraft nobody outside the U.S. Air Force fighter procurement office had ever heard of into afterburner. The...
The Crusader III: The Navy Fighter That Beat the Phantom — and Still Lost
In late 1958, in the high Texas sky over Naval Air Station Dallas, Vought's chief test pilot John Konrad flew an aircraft that could outmanoeuvre, outclimb, outrun and outturn the future F-4 Phantom II. The aircraft had a single engine. It had no radar operator....
The Grumman XF10F Jaguar: 74 Years Ago Today, the Swing Wing Took Off
Seventy-four years ago today — 19 May 1952 — at Edwards Air Force Base in the high California desert, Grumman test pilot Corwin “Corky” Meyer climbed into the cockpit of an aircraft so strange that nobody else in the U.S. Navy was qualified to...
DARPA’s X-76: Jet Speed, Helicopter Freedom — In One Aircraft
Helicopters do something fixed-wing aircraft cannot. They land on rooftops, in jungles, on the back of a destroyer, on a forest road, on a Pacific atoll smaller than a basketball court. The price they pay is speed. A helicopter that cruises at 150 knots is unusual....
The Teenager Who Invented the Autopilot — Eleven Years After Kitty Hawk
On the morning of 18 June 1914 — ten years and six months after Orville Wright lifted off Kitty Hawk — a 21-year-old American named Lawrence Burst Sperry flew a Curtiss C-2 biplane down the Seine at 50 feet above the water in front of a crowd of astonished Parisians....
Sun Country Brings Back Its Nineties Paint Job
Sun Country Airlines never expected to become an airline-industry case study. Founded in 1982 by laid-off Braniff pilots, it spent thirty years quietly running ski charters out of Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Las Vegas package tours, and the occasional NCAA bowl-game ferry...
Ethiopian Airlines Is in Talks for Another Massive Airbus Order
Most African airlines have spent the last decade trying to survive. Ethiopian Airlines has spent the last decade trying to outgrow every other airline on its continent — and then a few off it. The Addis Ababa-based carrier flies more international passengers than any...
What Happens During an Aircraft Emergency: The First 60 Seconds
When something goes catastrophically wrong in an aircraft cockpit, everything changes in an instant. Warning lights illuminate, horns blare, and the aircraft may suddenly behave in ways the pilots have never experienced outside a simulator. What happens in the next 60...
Cockpit Confessions: The Funniest ATC Recordings in Aviation History
Air traffic control is one of the most stressful jobs on Earth. Controllers are responsible for keeping thousands of aircraft from occupying the same piece of sky at the same time, all while managing delays, weather, emergencies, and pilots who occasionally forget...
The Difference Between IFR and VFR — And Why It Matters
Every flight that takes off anywhere in the world operates under one of two sets of rules: Visual Flight Rules (VFR) or Instrument Flight Rules (IFR). For passengers, this distinction is invisible. For pilots, it changes everything — from how they navigate to how they...
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