Editors' Picks
What the astronauts really said
Apollo "onboard voice" recordings captured the moon astronauts' conversations -- cussing and all -- when no one else was listening.
Drones for Hire
The newest eyes in the sky are drawing the attention of power companies, conservation groups, and the ACLU.
Five Reasons to Like NASA’s Asteroid Retrieval Mission
So it's not the Moon or Mars. Get over it.
The Invention of Flight
Inventors, dreamers, daredevils, charlatans: Aviation's early years had them all.
Disaster at Xichang
An eyewitness speaks publicly for the first time about history’s worst launch accident.
Page 16 of 31
In late 2001, as a cost-cutting measure, Delta Air Lines decided to replace its first-class linen tray cloths with paper placemats. As flight attendant Jewel Van Valin told the Los Angeles Times in July 2008, the first time she set down a paper mat, a disgruntled passenger “stared at it and then ro...
December 29, 2009
| By Rebecca Maksel
Frequent contributor Stephen Joiner writes: “The 737 runway overshoot in Jamaica on December 8 reminds me of our Boeing Aircraft On Ground article (“Airliner Repair 24/7,” Oct./Nov. 2008), where Boeing’s Jim Testin told me gravely, “Something will ALWAYS happen on Christmas eve” (and then it did.) ...
December 25, 2009
| By Pat Trenner
More coolness in Google Earth: A virtual helicopter flight over the Chamonix Valley in France, including Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in western Europe. Take the whole tour at this site (you'll need the Google Earth plug-in, which is easy to install) or watch a short YouTube video below:
December 22, 2009
| By Tony Reichhardt
Flexible blimps are bending the rules on UAV design.
December 18, 2009
| By Michael Klesius
The Boeing 787 Dreamliner made its long-awaited first flight yesterday. The Seattle Times has full coverage here.Watch Boeing's video here (click on Webcast), or see just the takeoff (below) courtesy of the Everett (Washington) Daily Herald.
December 16, 2009
| By Tony Reichhardt
Real Mars exploration has been at an impasse lately, what with the Spirit rover stuck in the sand, and the Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft both experiencing service interruptions.But virtual Mars exploration is going gangbusters. Google Mars, if you haven't tried it yet, is...
December 14, 2009
| By Tony Reichhardt
The September 2009 issue of Australian Aviation magazine contains the country’s Aircraft Census as of July 21. Some random selections:1 Airbus A319
38 Rotorway Exec 162Fs
4 Beech 17 Staggerwings
1 Bell 206A JetRanger
1 Boeing 707
111 Boeing 737s
207 de Havilland DH.82A Tiger Moths
1 Douglas C-54
1 ...
December 09, 2009
| By Pat Trenner
Think of Bombardier Aerospace, and one of the company's business airplanes—they build Learjet aircraft—might come to mind. But the well-known transportation and aerospace firm also designed the torch for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.The torch, which will twist and turn its way across Canada’s wintry...
December 09, 2009
| By Rebecca Maksel
NORAD, according to this history, has been tracking Santa since 1955, when a child's call to Sears Roebuck was mistakenly directed to the Continental Air Defense Command instead.Inevitable, I suppose, that in 2009 you can follow Santa on Facebook, YouTube, Google Earth and Twitter.
December 08, 2009
| By Tony Reichhardt
A Swiss-built solar-powered airplane made its first short "flea hop" flight yesterday, in anticipation of initial test flights next year. The Solar Impulse HB-S1A, a project of Swiss aeronautical adventurer Bertrand Piccard, flew 1,150 feet, skimming along a military runway in Zurich just a meter a...
December 04, 2009
| By Tony Reichhardt
A shame that Cessna doesn’t seem to recognize a potential PR gold mine. Remember when Mathias Rust landed a rented Cessna 172 near Red Square in 1987? Not a peep from Cessna headquarters. Now the company appears to have missed out again: In the mega-apocalyptic move 2012, a lowly Cessna 340A saves ...
November 18, 2009
| By Pat Trenner
A photo gallery of airplanes at the National Air and Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center.
November 17, 2009
| By Michael Klesius
Photographer Michael Collier and his Cessna 180 bring North America's coastal landscapes into focus.
November 17, 2009
| By Rebecca Maksel
Size matters. (Well, at least in the surveillance world.)And three projects under way take dimensions to whole new lengths. The LEMV (it stands for Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle) is a mammoth hybrid airship championed by the U.S. Army as part of a future fleet of reconnaissance vehicles...
November 17, 2009
| By Rebecca Maksel
According to a report in Flight International, India’s defense ministry is buying Russian-built MiG-29K fighters as "part of a 2004 order...that was incorporated into a deal for the aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov.”Wait—India has an aircraft carrier?That navy workhorse, the aircraft carrier, has ...
November 12, 2009
| By Rebecca Maksel
Robot aircraft keep getting smaller and smarter. This one, built by a team at MIT, won the International Aerial Robotics Competition 5th mission challenge, which required that it enter a building, find its way around (through hallways and open windows), and send video back to home base. All autonom...
November 05, 2009
| By Tony Reichhardt
Yes, our avian brothers committed feathered mayhem in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 classic The Birds, but is that any reason they should continue to be chucked into aircraft engines?Here’s the deal: All aircraft have to pass certification tests proving that the airplane can continue operating in the eve...
November 03, 2009
| By Rebecca Maksel
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