The Triple-Tailed Queen of the Propeller Age
It is just before dawn on 17 April 1944, and a sleek, triple-tailed airliner is rolling down the runway at Lockheed’s Burbank field. In the left seat, hands on the controls, sits one of the most famous men in America: Howard Hughes — aviator, tycoon, and...
The Pharaoh’s Supersonic Fighter, Built by a Nazi Legend
It is 7 March 1964, and the desert south of Cairo shimmers in the morning heat. On the runway at Helwan sits a tiny, needle-nosed delta-wing jet, barely bigger than a sports car with wings. An Egyptian test pilot runs the engine up, releases the brakes, and the little...
London to a Thai Beach, Nonstop at Last
From this December, a British holidaymaker will be able to board a Boeing 787 at London Gatwick and step off it on a beach in southern Thailand — no change of plane, no Gulf stopover. Norse Atlantic Airways has announced a new nonstop service between Gatwick and...
United Wraps a Jet in Stars and Stripes
United Airlines just turned a Boeing 787-10 into a flying flag. On 15 June 2026, the carrier rolled out a bold “Stars and Stripes” special livery — a deep blue fuselage, fifty white stars, and diagonal red-and-white stripes sweeping across the tail...
Anchorage to Boston, Nonstop for the First Time
For the first time ever, you can fly from Alaska to New England without stopping. On 13 June 2026, an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 lifted off from Ted Stevens Anchorage International and pointed its nose almost due east, bound for Boston — roughly eight hours and...
The Flying Barrel That Predicted the Jet Engine
It looks like someone strapped wings and two open cockpits onto a beer keg and pushed it off a hill. Short, fat and hollow, the Stipa-Caproni is routinely voted one of the ugliest aircraft ever to actually fly. And yet this 1932 Italian oddity quietly sketched out an...
The Warplane Germany Built Lopsided on Purpose
Some aircraft look wrong. The Blohm & Voss BV 141 looks impossible. The crew sits in a glazed pod on one side; the engine and the entire tail are on the other, joined by a stub of wing. It is as if someone took half of two different aeroplanes and bolted them...
Japan’s Kaga Is a Carrier Again
A grey warship longer than three football fields is steaming through the Pacific, and stealth fighters are dropping onto its deck. For most navies that would be unremarkable. For Japan, it is something close to historic — because for eighty years, Japan insisted it...
Taiwan and Washington, Connected Nonstop
On 26 June, an EVA Air Boeing 787 will lift off from Taipei, point its nose east, and not come down until it reaches Washington Dulles. It sounds routine. It is, in fact, a first: there has never been a nonstop flight between Taiwan and the capital of the United...
Missing 25 Feet of Wing, He Landed It
At 11,000 feet over the wooded hills north of New York City, on a grey December afternoon, two airliners that were never supposed to meet found themselves on a converging path. Within seconds the tip of a Boeing 707’s left wing sliced through the triple tail of...
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