Aircraft, airlines, history, and the future of flight.
You know that particular feeling when you turn a corner in a museum and something enormous is just there, filling your entire field of vision? At the Musée de l’Air et de l’Espace at Paris Le Bourget, that happens approximately every forty seconds. You round a partition expecting a display case and find yourself standing…
Picture this: you’re sitting at the window as your aircraft begins its descent, and the world below is nothing but ocean. Not a ship. Not a coastline. Not even a hint that land exists anywhere on Earth. Then, with about twenty minutes to go, a smudge appears — a volcanic triangle rising out of the…
There’s a moment, usually somewhere over the Atlantic, when the island of Madeira appears through the cloud base like something that shouldn’t exist. Steep, green, dramatic — a volcanic ridge erupting from the ocean with almost no flat ground to speak of. And somewhere on that ridge, improbably, is one of the most technically demanding…