Civil Aviation

Sometimes, the wispy white trails that follow an aircraft on its flight aren’t contrails but fuel that has been dumped by aircraft. This is also known as fuel jettison. Fuel dumping is a last-resort maneuver whereby a plane releases fuel in mid-air. This may seem environmentally unfriendly, but it is a critical safety measure in…

The iconic supersonic jet, Concorde, (which probably had an even more iconic flight number: BA001) concluded its 27-year service with a final landing at Filton runway in November 2003. An absence of commercial viability, public concerns about the plane’s noise ( the sonic boom ) alongside high levels of pollution, led to its demise.  Concorde…

In 2018, a Swedish social movement called flygskam, meaning “flight shame,” set out to make people feel guilty about boarding a plane. Seven years later, Sweden has scrapped the aviation tax it introduced at the movement’s peak, and global air travel closed out 2024 at a record high, according to a report by Flight Global…

The rise of sustainable travel, focusing on reducing our carbon footprint, brought about the concept of “flight shame”, which was better known as “flygskam”. Individuals who were concerned about the soaring levels of CO2 emissions associated with flights came up with another alternative movement known as ‘tågskryt’ – a word that is composed of the…

While the Lukla Airport is known as the Hillary Airport (with the name of the other mountaineer first to Everest-  Tenzing – often thrown in the mix as ‘Tenzing Hillary Airport’), it’s often news to a lot of people that this wasn’t the first (or the only) airport Sir Edmund Hillary had built in the…

The mutual sanctions and air restrictions resulting either in cancellation or rerouting of flights, increase in ticket prices, issues with titanium sourcing, and higher fuel costs: the Russia and Ukraine war has had a huge impact on the aviation industry among other economic issues. Along with this, the war halted aircraft deliveries to Russia and…

Pradip Bashyal, a BBC journalist based in Kathmandu and writer of the brilliant book “Sherpa” shares his thoughts on the airport that is “considered one of the most dangerous airfields in the world”– Lukla: “The runway at this airport, which is a brief strip of just 527m (1,729ft) starting at the edge of a cliff…

It has been just over a century since passengers have been able to fly commercially. During this time, we have seen giants such as the Airbus A380, which has the capacity to transport more than 850 passengers and set a record for being the biggest commercial aircraft ever. Aircraft like the A380 necessitate a different…

Aviation has undergone a remarkable transformation since the era of the Wright Brothers. We have seen the introduction of bizarre aircraft such as the Caspian Sea Monster, the all-metal monster the Kalinin K-7, and hypersonic aircraft that fly seven times the speed of sound. A helicopter has landed at the top of Mount Everest and…