What's better than flying first class? Flying your own plane, obviously. Owning (and being able to fly) private aircraft is certainly a trend among some of the biggest names in Hollywood (and the music industry). And who could begrudge them? Very few things are as cool as flying, and being able to own your own [...]
People like to do cool stuff and keep records of said stuff. It’s a very human thing to be competitive, or at least strive to break the perceived limitations of what is known. That’s why Guinness World Records exists: what’s the point of being amazing at something if you’re not officially amazing? Just Plane Amazing [...]
If my five-year-old self could’ve designed an airplane, it may have looked a lot like Alexander Lippisch’s Aerodyne. Lippisch – for the uninitiated – was a German engineer who was fundamental to the modern aircraft designs we see in use today. Lippisch was a phenomenal inventor and an incredible engineer. His most popular craft is [...]
Tom Cruise may be pushing the boundaries of insanity by many of our standards, but—dear lord—was there ever a face so exquisitely shaped for a pair of aviator sunglasses? Photo from bug-bytes.net. As you can see, Cruise is obscenely photogenic—as is his right-hand-iceman, Val Kilmer—in 1986’s Top Gun. While the late Tony Scott’s [...]
Variations in language make life interesting, although those very same nuisances can make conversation confusing if you don't know what the heck they're talking about. And while we might be a little biased, we think that aviation slang marks for some of the coolest cultural and professional variation of the English language, which is why [...]
Fatigue Testing How do you stress test an airplane? Well, you don’t make it run on a treadmill, that’s for sure. Fatigue testing aircraft is important in determining the structural integrity and quality of the airframe before they actually take flight (you know, with people travelling in them). This simulation testing allows [...]
Let it be said: every pilot knows all too well the name of Howard Hughes. In a time when the long-running, American trend of neglecting the notion of a singular job title was beginning to catch momentum, Howard Hughes was world-famous aviator, aerospace engineer, entrepreneur, filmmaker, and philanthropist. As a man who represented extreme wealth [...]
Teaching Dogs to Fly You might be familiar with the adynaton, “when pigs fly,” but how familiar are you with the notion of flying dogs? While Fido may not be sprouting wings any time soon, a select group of dogs in the UK have shed their limitations of four paws on the ground in exchange [...]
You might have heard that there’s a professional pilot shortage in the aviation industry. You also might have heard there is no shortage. Huh? There’s a bit of ambiguity on the subject, and even the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) confesses that there is “mixed evidence regarding the extent of a shortage of airline pilots,” [...]
90 years for United Airlines hardly seems like a long time. For thousands of years, humans have always been fascinated by the prospect of flight. During the Middle Ages, several…erm…optimistic individuals strapped large, winged contraptions to their torsos: jumping off of high structures in a futile attempt to break away from the largely inconvenient but [...]
