Civil Aviation

Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport (MRIA) is located in the Hambantota district, which houses a town called “Mattala”- after which this emptiest airport in the world is named. The other word in the name of the airport- “Rajapaksha”- comes from the name of the Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksha who opened the airstrip in 2013.  One…

Apart from having a visual distinction of being a metal monster, the Russian aircraft Kalinin K-7 is a brilliant example of a creative flying machine. Developed in the early 1930s, Kalinin K-7 was designed with a unique form consisting of booms, sizable underwing pods, fixed landing gear, and machine gun turrets inside the pods. It…

The word “Aviation” is cognate with “Aves”- the word with which we describe the animals that take to the skies. And it is this dream of taking to the skies, possibly beyond the horizon where a word like “sky” is rendered meaningless, is what captures the imagination of billions of people. And these creative, imaginative…

Only a few hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the start of a “special military operation” in Ukraine, the Russian Airborne Forces launched an airstrike on Hostomel Airport on February 24, 2022. The airport was home to the lone Antonov An-225 Mriya, the largest aircraft ever built. The Hostomel Airport, also known as the…

When in Kitty Hawk, the two brothers who were to be later immortalized in the world of aviation as “The Wright Brothers” rose skywards, little did they realize that they would be allowing the space to carve a lot of words that the English vocabulary had yet to discover: “Airports” and “Air Strips” and “Aerodromes”…

The Beluga whale is often thought to have qualities that we don’t normally associate with whales: it is said to be graceful, lithe, and communicative features such as a smile. It might have been these qualities that Airbus wanted to have in its gigantic cargo airliner that it gave the name “Airbus Beluga” to its…

When the UK government’s RAF VIP Voyager aircraft was painted in a patriotic red, white, and blue scheme back in 2020, the expenses equaled £900,000 ($1.16 million). When for the 2020 Expo, Emirates decided to paint its aircraft in a sea of blue daubed with an array of other colors, it consumed 379 staff hours…