This story has been around the internet for awhile, but man is it worth a read. Test pilot Bill Weaver was flying an SR-71 Blackbird on an experimental evaluation flight when a malfunction at Mach 3.18 caused the plane to literally tear apart. Yet somehow, Weaver survived. Read More >>
With smog in Beijing so bad it's forced pilots to land blind and officials to shut the airport, China has unveiled a new plan to test drones that spray smog-clearing chemicals around fly-zones . How will it work? Read More >>
Impressive time-lapse video of The Boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona, 2,600 acres of desolate desert where 5,000 US military airplanes went to die. It makes me sad to look at them, but their decay is truly beautiful. Read More >>
One of the most intriguing products of the Phantom Works that really was a denizen of Area 51 on George Muellner's watch was the Bird of Prey. Visually, this aircraft possessed the strange, but sleek design characteristics that are appreciated by those in the world of extraterrestrial buffs. It was even named after an alien spaceship. According to James Wallace, writing in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer of October 18, 2002, it is named for a class of Klingon starships first seen in the 1984 motion picture Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. Read More >>
David vs. Goliath. Burr vs. Hamilton. Ali vs. Frazier. These fights have captured the public's imagination like few others. On March 20, 1992, another battle entered this conversation. Herwald vs. Kelleher. Okay, so most likely, you probably don't have any clue who Kurt Herwald and Herb Kelleher are and why they decided to match up against one another, but you soon will. Read More >>
Given how devastatingly effective both newly-invented tank and airplane technologies proved during World War I, it was only a matter of time before enterprising military designers on both sides of the Atlantic thought to combine them into a flying machine of armoured mayhem. And they almost succeeded. Well, at least the Soviets did. Read More >>
When it comes to war, innovation is key and WWII saw more insane ideas and weapons of war developed than perhaps any before it. One of the more surreal was the Antonov A-40, colloquially known as the tank that could fly! Read More >>
Seatbelts and airbags in cars save passengers lives. Parachutes save people who, for a variety of reasons, exit a plane in mid-flight. So why aren't parachutes provided to passengers on commercial airline flights, in case of emergencies? Because they almost certainly would not save anyone's life. Read More >>
As emigration plans go, this one was at least ambitious: a co-pilot of an Ethiopian Airlines flight to Italy hijacked his own plane this morning to try and seek asylum in Switzerland. Read More >>
While U.S. military has had its fair share of bungled development programmes—just look at the V-22 Osprey or the littoral combat ship—the ill-fated A-12 Avenger II is a strong candidate for the worst. It was so poorly managed that, if completed, the programme could have sunk nearly all of the Navy's budget. Read More >>
So, things are a little wet here in the UK at the moment. But that's nothing. You've heard the expression "raining cats and dogs", right? Well, in Saudi Arabia it's raining human body parts. Read More >>
The pilot of an Airbus A320 was thrown into a panic while flying 20 miles west of Heathrow, telling authorities he saw a metallic "cigar/rugby ball like" object and "was fully expecting to experience some kind of impact with a conflicting aircraft." But nothing happened. So it was probably a goose or kids sending their phone into space on a balloon. [Telegraph] Read More >>
You know you've been watching too much Top Gun when you find yourself skimming a few feet above the ground and mere inches above your camera in an antiquated aeroplane from the 1940's. Who exactly decided this was a good idea? Details on this low-flying stunt are pretty slim save for the assurance by the clip's creator that it was performed "at a private air strip no one around for miles and there were no dogs cats are birds harmed in the making of this video." Well, seems they'd really thought this through before trying it. Read More >>
As such, the Air Force's 16th Expeditionary Special Operations Squadron has recently announced that they'll be retiring the Specters from combat this year in favour of the newer AC-130U Spooky's and AC-130J Ghost Riders. Ride along with the flight crew of an AC-130H on one of its final operations in Afghanistan in the video above. Read More >>
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