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...
Was passiert tatsächlich im Inneren eines Windkanals?

Was passiert tatsächlich im Inneren eines Windkanals?

Jedes Flugzeug, das Sie jemals am Himmel gesehen haben, wurde zuerst in einem Raum getestet, in dem nichts fliegt. Windkanäle sind konzeptionell die einfachsten Werkzeuge der Luft- und Raumfahrttechnik: Man nehme ein Rohr, fülle ein Ende mit Luft, stelle ein Modell in die Mitte und miss, was passiert. In...
The Bent Wingtips That Save Billions in Fuel

The Bent Wingtips That Save Billions in Fuel

Sit in a window seat over the wing of almost any modern airliner and you will see it: the wingtip, instead of ending in a clean point, bends sharply upward into a fin. It looks like a small design flourish. It is not. That upturned tip is quietly one of the most...
The Jet With Its Wings on Backwards

The Jet With Its Wings on Backwards

Roll the X-29 onto its back and the wings look wrong. Not damaged, not folded for storage — just backwards. Where every other jet on the ramp sweeps its wings rearward like an arrowhead, the X-29 sweeps them forward, the tips reaching out ahead of the roots as...
Air Canada Bets Big on a Smaller Jet

Air Canada Bets Big on a Smaller Jet

On the first morning of June, an Air Canada jet pushed back at Montreal and pointed its nose at Nantes, a tidy French city on the Loire that no Canadian airline had ever served nonstop. Two days later, a widebody lifted off from Toronto bound for Shanghai for the...
China Eastern Bets $9 Billion on Airbus

China Eastern Bets $9 Billion on Airbus

On a Friday afternoon in Shanghai, executives from China Eastern Airlines and Airbus signed their names to a document that quietly reshapes the balance of power in the world’s most fought-over aviation market. The deal: 25 brand-new Airbus A330-900neo widebodies, with...