Code 7500: Bulgaria’s MiG-29 Scrambles

Code 7500: Bulgaria’s MiG-29 Scrambles

At 1:54pm on June 30, a Bulgarian MiG-29 lit its afterburners and clawed off the runway at Graf Ignatievo. Three minutes later it had formed up on the wing of a civilian Airbus A320 that had just transmitted the four digits every air-defence controller dreads:...
Trump’s Qatari Air Force One Finally Flies

Trump’s Qatari Air Force One Finally Flies

Somewhere over the Great Plains on Wednesday, a 14-year-old Boeing 747 that nobody could sell will become the most politically radioactive aircraft in American skies. President Donald Trump is taking his first flight aboard the Qatari-gifted Air Force One — and...
A Chinese Missile May Have Downed a US Jet

A Chinese Missile May Have Downed a US Jet

When an American F-15E Strike Eagle went down over Iran this spring, the obvious question was what shot it. A new answer is now circulating in Washington — and it points east, to China. According to NBC News, citing sources familiar with the investigation, U.S....
1,300 F-35s, a Pipeline Built for 800

1,300 F-35s, a Pipeline Built for 800

The Marine general who runs the F-35 program walked into a Senate hearing this week and said the quiet part out loud: the most expensive weapons program in history has outgrown the system built to keep it flying.It landed weeks after a Government Accountability Office...
Two Drones, Two New York Airports, One Week

Two Drones, Two New York Airports, One Week

United Flight 1513, a Boeing 737-700 inbound from Key West with 106 people on board, is on final approach to Newark Liberty on a Friday afternoon when the crew sees a small circular object — perhaps three feet across — flash past about a hundred feet...
The Call-Sign Mix-Up That Stopped Flight 308

The Call-Sign Mix-Up That Stopped Flight 308

It is just after six o’clock on a Saturday evening at Miami International Airport. American Airlines Flight 308, an Airbus A319 loaded with passengers bound for Bermuda, has been cleared onto Runway 8 and is beginning to roll. Then the crew sees something that...