Civil Aviation

Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) has a rather delightful program called PUPs, or Pets Unstressing Passengers. There were around 93 dogs in this airport to “spread the love at LAX’s gate areas at each terminal’s departures levels“. But these PUPs don’t board the flight. Bark Air’s introduction marked the first airline dedicated solely to the…

Concorde was an aircraft that had come after fourteen years of collaboration between France and Britain. It was sleek, agile, and had cruised at greater than Mach 2, allowing it to cross the pond in less than two hours. This aircraft saw passenger operations as far back as 1976, prompting to ask if one could…

On May 17th, 1987, a special type of Falcon 50 (dubbed Suzanna) attacked a naval frigate USS Stark patrolled the Persian Gulf. The frigate was as part of the United States’ support efforts during the Iran-Iraq war, and it was initially assessed that the sloop was chartering in international territory when it was attacked.  Suzanna…

When the former Air France chairman, Jean-Cyril Spinetta, said, “Concorde will never really stop flying because she will live on in people’s imagination”, it encapsulated everyone’s feelings. Apart from hardcore environmentalists who have maintained that an aviation world full of Concordes would simply ruin the planet (for the aircraft was a gas guzzler)…

One of the most iconic pictures in all of space science and aviation is the photograph of Antonov An-225, one of the biggest aircraft ever constructed, taking the Buran space shuttle into the skies. One can also think of the photograph of the first untethered spacewalk. When the first American who flew to space compared…

Over the years, many aircraft disappearances have baffled the world of aviation. The most obvious, and perhaps the most harrowing of them was the disppearance of Malaysian Airlines MH 370. Another noteworthy incident is the disappearance of Uruguayan Airlines Flight 571, which was later discovered, only to leave the world in bewilderment, for the case…

The highest ever recorded bird strike (i.e., a collision of a bird and an aircraft) occurred over the West African coast when an Air Ivory Coast aircraft struck a vulture at a staggering height of 37,000 feet – an altitude which is almost 8,000 ft greater than the height of Mount Everest…

The word “Lukla” in the Sherpa language refers to an “abode of sheep”. Locals say that in the past, the region was rife with this creature, though one would find it next to impossible to locate it these days in the “most-dangerous airport” region. Before the construction of Lula’s iconic airport (LUA), which has been…

Only 67 units of the world’s largest turboprop aircraft, the Antonov An-22 “Antei” were made. 60 of these are operated by Russia’s Military Transport. Six An-22s have been lost to catastrophes, a handful are in storage, and only three are flying. So when it was announced last year that the aircraft would be retired from…