Thursday, February 21, 2013 - 6:33pm
A California man's lifelong memories of flying on a PanAm 747 as a child, turn into an amazing 'plane' that goes nowhere.
Aircraft stories
Wednesday, February 20, 2013 - 3:48pm
With a lot of personal space and your own dedicated overhead bin, AirGo seats might just be worth a 16% premium.
Monday, February 4, 2013 - 11:28am
Iran has, or says it has, a brand new stealth fighter aircraft called the Qaher-313. We have a bunch of pics, some terrible video, and a huge helping of skepticism.
Friday, February 1, 2013 - 2:20pm
Combining green energy and the aesthetics of futuristic design, this balloon will send you into the sky with the sun as your engine.
Thursday, January 24, 2013 - 6:07pm
Thank you, DARPA, for preserving our faith in the awesomeness of the future by deciding that 2014 will be the year to equip combat aircraft with frikkin' lasers.
Monday, December 10, 2012 - 1:47pm
If Northrop Grumman has this airplane flying around right now, patents like these are our only clue that it exists. This particular drawing shows one of Northrop's "Next-Generation Bomber" patents, an evolution of the B-2 Spirit. The most notable new feature? Those little retractable mustache-canards. Adorable!
Monday, October 15, 2012 - 1:26pm
Birds have been doing this whole flying thing long before airplanes got in the game, but for some reason, it seems like the U.S. Air Force has been slow to pick up on what geese (and other birds) have been showing us for decades: flying in a formation that "surfs" on vortices can save substantial amounts of energy. Now, the USAF will check it out with a new project called $AVE.
Monday, October 8, 2012 - 9:09am
Declassified government documents are fun, especially ones that detail the United States Air Force's flirtations with flying saucers. While the aircraft was designed for speeds between Mach 3 and 4, it never quite got there.
Monday, September 10, 2012 - 1:42pm
We've always appreciated Airbus' no-holds-barred approach for imagining the future of air travel, with machinations like its spectacularly improbable concept plane. But future air travel involves much more than just the planes themselves: it starts before take-off and ends after landing, and could be substantially faster, more comfortable and better for the environment than it is now.
Here are five ways in which Airbus is working to make air travel better for everyone, including the planet, by 2050. And stick around after the gallery to check out a video of some of these concepts in action.
Wednesday, August 29, 2012 - 2:08pm
Designing the perfect aircraft is impossible. For takeoff and landing (arguably the most important parts of flying), you want something with wide, broad wings. But to fly fast and efficiently, you want wings that are swept back and as small as possible. Variable sweep wings are a compromise, but this concept (just funded by NASA) proposes something, um, different.
