The World’s First Jet Airliner — and Why It Fell Apart
On 2 May 1952, a British Overseas Airways Corporation de Havilland Comet lifted off from London Heathrow and flew to Johannesburg. It carried 36 passengers in pressurised comfort at 35,000 feet, cruising at 500 mph — twice the speed of any existing airliner. The jet...
Asleep at the Yoke: The Pilots Who Napped Their Way Past the Destination
It is, perhaps, the most universal of human failings: falling asleep when you should not. We have all done it — during lectures, during meetings, during films we swore we wanted to watch. But most of us have not done it while flying an aircraft at 8,000 feet. Some...
The F-20 Tigershark: The Best Fighter Nobody Was Allowed to Buy
Here is a story about building a better mousetrap and watching the world buy the old one anyway. In the early 1980s, Northrop spent $1.2 billion of its own money — not government money, its own — to develop the F-20 Tigershark. It was lighter than the F-16. It was...
The Flying Pancake: The Flat Disc That Actually Flew
In the autumn of 1942, residents of Stratford, Connecticut, began calling the police to report a flying saucer over the Housatonic River. The callers were not delusional. There was, in fact, a flat, disc-shaped object circling lazily above the Vought-Sikorsky factory...
Sea Dart: The Only Supersonic Seaplane Ever Built
On August 3, 1954, a delta-winged jet fighter accelerated across the surface of San Diego Bay on twin retractable hydro-skis, lifted off the water, climbed to altitude, and exceeded Mach 1 in a shallow dive. No runway. No carrier deck. Just open water, two...
She Flew When America Said No: The Story of Bessie Coleman
In 1921, no flight school in the United States would take her. Not because she lacked ability — she hadn’t been given the chance to prove it. They turned her away because she was Black, and because she was a woman. So Bessie Coleman learned French, saved her...
The Lopsided Genius: Blohm & Voss BV 141
Look at a photograph of the Blohm & Voss BV 141 for the first time and your brain does something interesting. It tries to correct the image. It assumes the photo is cropped oddly, or that you are seeing the aircraft from an unusual angle, or that something has...
The Coléoptère: France’s Insane Annular-Wing VTOL Jet
Picture a jet engine standing on its tail. Now wrap an annular wing around it — a hollow doughnut of aluminium and steel. Put a man in a tilting seat at the top, light the afterburner, and launch the whole thing straight up like a Roman candle. That, in essence, was...
Dublin to Raleigh: Aer Lingus Proves the A321XLR Revolution Is Real
There is a city in North Carolina that has never had a non-stop flight to Europe. On April 13, Aer Lingus changed that — launching Dublin to Raleigh-Durham service with the Airbus A321XLR, operating up to five times per week. The route would have been economically...
226 MAXs: India’s Akasa Air Places One of Aviation’s Biggest Orders
Akasa Air is two years old, operates 38 aircraft, and has just signed a firm order for 226 Boeing 737 MAX jets — with 188 more in the pipeline. For a startup that did not exist before 2022, the numbers are staggering. They also tell a story about India’s...
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