North Pole 1926: Did Byrd Actually Make It?
One hundred years ago today — 9 May 1926 — a Fokker F.VII trimotor named Josephine Ford took off from a snow strip on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, climbed to 1,500 feet, and disappeared north into the Arctic dawn. Fifteen and a half hours later it landed back...
Why Rheinmetall is Crashing While Europe Rearms
Rheinmetall’s stock peaked at €1,930 in March 2025. It is trading today at €1,180 — a 39 percent fall in fourteen months. BAE Systems is down 22 percent over the same period. Saab is down 18 percent. Leonardo is down 14 percent. Thales is flat. This is happening...
Lufthansa Brings Back the 1955 Crane on an A380
The Lufthansa Crane has been the airline’s mascot since 1918, longer than the airline has been called Lufthansa. The bird first appeared on Deutsche Luft-Reederei aircraft when commercial aviation was only weeks old. It has been redrawn three times in the...
Atlas Air Bets $7 Billion on the A350F
Atlas Air is the world’s largest operator of Boeing 747 freighters. The carrier flies more 747-8Fs and 747-400s than any other airline on Earth. The 747 is, in many ways, the brand. So when Atlas walks into Toulouse and signs a $7-billion order for 20 firm and...
Pyka’s Pilotless Cargo Plane Just Flew Itself
The aircraft is the size of a Cessna 172 but flies itself. There is no pilot. There is no cockpit. There is no second seat for an emergency manual override. Pyka’s Pelican Cargo just took off, flew a 200-kilometre route over central California, and landed itself...
AFRL Just Got a Pentagon-Mandated Makeover
The Air Force Research Laboratory — the organisation that, over the decades, has pushed everything from the F-117 stealth shape to the X-51 hypersonic scramjet test vehicle into existence — is being restructured. The Pentagon confirmed this week that AFRL will be...
From F-22 Cockpit to Lockheed Aeronautics’ Corner Office
The most powerful aviation job in America just went to a man who used to fly F-22s for a living. Lockheed Martin has named a former U.S. Air Force Raptor pilot to lead Lockheed Martin Aeronautics — the division that builds the F-22, the F-35, the C-130, and whatever...
Space Force Drops $4 Billion on Andromeda Spy Satellites
The U.S. Space Force has just added four billion dollars to a contract called Andromeda. Most readers will, understandably, have never heard of Andromeda. That is, in some sense, the point. Andromeda is the cover name for what amounts to America’s...
The Most Remote Airports on Earth
There are airports where the runway is a beach, the approach involves aiming at a cliff face, and the wind can flip a turboprop like a playing card. They do not appear in airline booking engines. They have no jet bridges, no lounges, no duty-free. What they have is...
Why Airline Food Tastes Strange at 35,000 Feet
The tray table folds down, the foil peels back, and there it is: airline food. Humanity’s most maligned meal. The jokes write themselves. But the science behind why everything tastes different at 35,000 feet is genuinely fascinating — a collision of physics,...
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