Insights, updates, and aviation stories.
At some point before every flight, a fuel truck pulls up to the aircraft, connects a hose to the wing, and pumps in tens of thousands of pounds of jet fuel. The process takes anywhere from fifteen minutes to over an hour. Passengers barely notice. But the quantity of fuel going into that aircraft is […]
Your 6am flight boards at 5:40. The aircraft has been sitting at the gate since just after 11pm, when the inbound crew shut down the engines and handed over the paperwork. Seven hours have passed. In that time, the cabin lights have been off, the jet bridge has been retracted, and the ramp outside has […]
You are at the gate when the ground agent makes an announcement: there is a “minor maintenance item” being addressed, and departure will be slightly delayed. Twenty minutes later you board, and a small printed notice in the seat pocket mentions that the in-seat entertainment screen in your row is inoperative. The aircraft takes off […]
Somewhere between the moment you book a ticket and the moment your aircraft pushes back from the gate, someone you will never meet has already spent the better part of an hour working on your specific flight. They have pulled the weather forecasts for your departure and arrival airports, selected an optimal route through the […]
In 2020, a 19-year-old college student named Jack Sweeney built a Twitter bot that tracked Elon Musk’s private jet using publicly available flight data and posted its location in real time. Musk noticed. He sent Sweeney a direct message offering $5,000 to take the account down, citing security concerns. Sweeney countered with $50,000, or a […]
In July 2022, Kylie Jenner posted a photo to Instagram that the internet could not ignore. Standing on a sunlit tarmac alongside Travis Scott, two enormous private jets gleaming behind them, she captioned it simply: “you wanna take mine or yours?” Within hours, the post had millions of likes and an equal measure of outrage. […]
Most celebrities who own private jets have never touched the controls. John Travolta has type ratings for the Boeing 707, the Boeing 737, and the Boeing 747. He started flying at age 15. He navigated a Gulfstream through a total electrical failure over Washington DC using only a compass and a flashlight. And he lives […]
Sit down in the left seat of a small training aircraft and the first thing that hits you is the panel. Dozens of round dials, needle-and-scale gauges, digital readouts, switches, and knobs fill the space in front of you. From the outside, it looks like controlled chaos. From the pilot’s seat, it is something else […]
Look at the instrument panel of any small training aircraft and your eye will eventually settle on a cluster of six round gauges arranged near the centre. They are not random. They are not decorative. Each one answers a specific question that a pilot in flight needs answered continuously: how fast, how high, which way, […]
Imagine flying at four thousand feet through a solid layer of cloud. There is nothing outside the windows but grey: no ground, no sky, no horizon line to anchor your sense of up and down. Within about twenty seconds of losing your visual reference, your inner ear begins to lie. A gradual bank feels exactly […]