The Jet That Took Off Hanging From a Hook
Picture a flatbed trailer tilting slowly skyward in the California desert until it stands almost vertical, and clinging to it nose-up like a wasp on a windowpane, a stubby silver dart of an aircraft. There is no runway in sight. There is no landing gear worth the...
China’s Cargo Drone Just Flew Itself
On a grey morning in Pucheng, in China’s Shaanxi province, a chunky white-and-blue aircraft with two propellers and a twin-boom tail rolled down the runway, lifted off, and flew a full 22-minute circuit — climb, manoeuvre, approach and landing. Nothing...
Amazon’s Delivery Drones Just Left the US
In a back garden in Darlington, a 40-kilo aircraft drops out of the County Durham sky, hovers about four metres up, releases a shoebox-sized parcel onto the lawn, and climbs away again. No van. No driver. No knock on the door. Just a tube of mascara, or a phone cable,...
The $9 Billion Jet That Never Flew a Passenger
It flew. That is the strangest, most expensive part of the whole story. The Mitsubishi SpaceJet was not a paper aeroplane or a CGI fantasy that died on a designer’s screen. It rolled out, it taxied, it rotated off the runway at Nagoya, and it climbed into a...
Philippine Airlines Puts Its A350-1000 on the Manila–Toronto Marathon
Philippine Airlines has just made one of the world’s longest commercial hops a little fresher. As of 5 June 2026, the flag carrier is flying its brand-new Airbus A350-1000 nonstop between Manila and Toronto — a roughly 13,200 km marathon that now becomes...
The Fighter With Its Wings On Backwards
Picture a desert morning at Edwards in 1949: dust, sagebrush, and a fighter that looks like someone bolted the wings on the wrong way round. Most aircraft wings are fat where they meet the fuselage and slim to a graceful point at the tip. The Republic XF-91...
Japan Wrapped a Jet in White. Why?
On a humid June afternoon, a Japanese plane-spotter pointed a long lens at the flight line of Gifu Air Base and froze. Tucked against a hangar wall sat something large, the size of a fighter, and it was wrapped from nose to tail in white fabric like a piece of...
Singapore Airlines Eyes 50 New Widebody Jets
When Singapore Airlines goes shopping for aircraft, the rest of the industry leans in to watch. The Changi-based carrier has spent decades building a reputation as a benchmark for premium long-haul flying, and the jets it chooses tend to become the jets everyone else...
The Man Who Jumped From the Edge of Space
On 16 August 1960, a tiny open gondola hung beneath an enormous helium balloon, 102,800 feet above the New Mexico desert. That is more than 31 kilometres up — high enough that the sky overhead is black, the horizon curves, and there is almost no air left to breathe....
The Coke-Bottle Trick That Broke the Sound Barrier
In the early 1950s, the newest, fastest jets in the world kept running into an invisible wall. They would accelerate beautifully — and then, just short of the speed of sound, a surge of drag would swallow their engines’ power and stop them dead. Brand-new fighters...
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