Standing in the expansive Dassault Falcon hangar at an unusually quiet Paris Le Bourget Airport in late February, the sense of national pride among the assembled French aeronautical world was palpable as the airframer unveiled its latest jet, the Falcon 6X. That pride comes not just from the fact that 6X meets a large-cabin, long-range need
“Profound” is how Captain Richard Champion de Crespigny described the significance of A380 VH-OQA Nancy-Bird Walton’s return to the Qantas fleet. Qantas’s first Airbus A380 and hence the symbolic flagship of the airline’s fleet, VH-OQA returned safely to Singapore under Captain de Crespigny’s command after an uncontained explosive failure of its number two Rolls-Royce Trent
Randy Tinseth remembers the first time he visited Tokyo Narita Airport. It was 1989 and there were Boeing 747s lined up as far as the eye could see. Fast forward a few years and those 747s had given way to Boeing’s latest widebody workhorse, the 777. When Boeing Commercial Airplanes’ vice president of marketing visits
From cropdusting fields with an old Tiger Moth to conducting life-saving aerial firefighting, it’s fair to say the Pay’s Group has just about done it all in 60 years. Based out of Scone in regional New South Wales, the group is a busy operation these days, split into the four main arms of Pay’s Air
When Australian troops first deployed to Afghanistan in late 2002, the Australian Defence Force (ADF) had no unmanned aircraft and not much experience beyond some trials, which did show the vast potential for this technology. Sixteen years on, the ADF is becoming a UAS (unmanned aerial systems) force with all three services set to possess
Airbus bills its A380 as “the passengers’ favourite”. That’s the message on Airbus’s “I fly A380” marketing website devoted to the world’s largest passenger aircraft, which among other things features a wall of social media posts from scores of happy travellers. The popularity of the A380 among the flying public is also borne out in
