Airplanes

The Intricate Skill That Goes Into Landing a Fighter Jet

Landing on an aircraft carrier's 300-feet runway seems like an impossible task

Fifty Years Ago, Airline Diplomacy Sought to Bring the U.S. and U.S.S.R. Closer Together

Hopes for a Cold War détente were sky high when the first American and Soviet flights took off 50 years ago

Airbus and Zodiac Aerospace have teamed up on lower-deck modules like this one, with sleeping berths.

Seven Airplane Innovations That Could Change How We Travel

In-flight virtual reality entertainment? Bunk beds in the cargo hold? These innovations may be the future of flight.

A Curtiss "Jenny" biplane carrying mail for Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, before takeoff from the Polo Grounds in Washington, D.C.

Delivering the Mail Was Once One of the Riskiest Jobs in America

A new exhibition at the National Postal Museum honors the nation’s first airmail pilots

“Inverted Jennies” grew in notoriety; as one writer note, they “blossomed into the Taj Mahal of stamps."

How the Inverted Jenny, a 24-Cent Stamp, Came to Be Worth a Fortune

Mark the centennial of an epic mistake at the National Postal Museum where several of these world-famous stamps are on view

Your Summer Vacation Is a Carbon Emissions Nightmare

A new study of tourism supply chains shows that all those flights, zip-line tours and foie gras produce 8 percent of global carbon emissions

Would you be – or feel – safer if one of these people were a robot?

Would You Trust Drone Software to Pilot Your Flight?

Drones have already flown more hours than humans have. Now companies are looking to apply that data to commercial flight

Photographer Witnesses Final Moments Before Plane Crash

National Airlines Flight 102 took off from an airfield in northeastern Afghanistan. Minutes later, it would stall in midair before crashing to the ground

AirAsia Flight 8501 Plummets into Java Sea Mid-Flight

On December 28, 2014, 43 minutes into its flight, AirAsia Flight 8501 vanished from radar. With 162 people on board, it would go down

Ten Summer Camps For Little Innovators

Forget swimming and archery. These camps will have your kids building robots, pitching business ideas, even fighting zombies!

This Pilot Made an Emergency Landing in a Shallow River

It’s January 16, 2002 and Garuda Indonesia Flight 421 is struggling with a loss of power. The captain decides to perform a maneuver

Did This Co-Pilot Willfully Crash Into the French Alps?

On the morning of March 24, 2015, Germanwings Flight 9525 sets off from Barcelona, on its way to Dusseldorf

The wreckage of a Southern Airways DC-9 sits in the front yard of a home facing the road that the plane attempted an emergency landing on in New Hope, Ga., April 5, 1977. The pilot's attempt to save himself and his passengers occurred after the plane's engines failed during a heavy thunderstorm.

What Happened When a Southern Airways Flight 242 Crashed in Sadie Burkhalter’s Front Yard

Her home became a makeshift hospital when she looked out her front door to a fiery inferno

A 1988 Flight From Denver Crashes in Bad Weather

It's January 19, 1988, and Trans-Colorado Flight 2286 is attempting to land at Durango La Plata Airport

This Minor Detour Led to Disaster for Flight 706

On July 30, 1998, the pilot of Proteus Airlines Flight 706 made a slight detour so his passengers could watch a famous ocean liner

Raw Footage of the China Airlines Flight 120 Explosion

On the morning of August 20, 2007, a devastating fire broke out on China Airlines Flight 120 which had just landed in Naha airport

This 1977 Plane Crash Occurred Right on the Runway

On March 27, 1977, at Los Rodeos airport in Tenerife, Pan Am Flight 1736 was sitting on the taxiway waiting to take off

View from the cockpit of Solar Impulse 2 as the plane heads for landing in Abu Dhabi.

Inside the First Solar-Powered Flight Around the World

A new documentary highlights the challenges overcome by the experimental aircraft, Solar Impulse

A North American F-100D Super Sabre drops a napalm bomb near Bien Hoa, South Vietnam, 1967.

This Fighter Jet Turned the Tide During Vietnam's Decisive Tet Offensive

More than five decades ago, America won this huge battle, but lost the war

A Doomed Aircraft Is Left to Fly Until It Runs Out of Fuel

Learjet 35 was a doomed plane, flying miles off course and with passengers and crew presumed dead

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