Free Republic

A small plane caused a stir Thursday morning when it landed on a highway near Quebec City. Motorists who were driving on Highway 40 near the municipality of St-Augustin-de-Desmaures alerted the police around 10:40 a.m. Sgt. Helene Nepton of the provincial police said the aircraft landed without incident, and nobody on the plane or on the highway was injured.

United Airlines said on April 15 that it has cut its flight schedule by 90 percent in May and expects similar cuts for June as a result of the CCP virus pandemic, and warned that travel demand that is now “essentially at zero shows no sign of improving in the near term,” making job cuts likely. United disclosed its outlook in a memo to employees that it publicly released. The memo was from Chief Executive Oscar Munoz and President Scott Kirby. Like other U.S. airlines, travel demand for Chicago-based United has cratered as most U.S. states have ordered residents to...

A surprise company outing to an air base caused a 64-year-old French man so much stress that he flung himself from a fighter jet in midair, grabbing the ejector button in a panic and tumbling through the skies above France before landing in a field. The man had been surprised by employees at his firm, who had organized a joyride in a Dassault Rafale B jet for him as a treat. But they apparently didn’t know their colleague as well as they thought. Once the man arrived at the Saint-Dizier air base in northeastern France and realized what his co-workers...

TJ Kim can’t play lacrosse -- COVID-19 took the sport away. And at age 16, he can’t drive alone. But Kim can fly. And he’s turned his flying lessons into missions of mercy, bringing desperately needed supplies to rural hospitals in need. Each week, he carries gloves, masks, gowns and other equipment to small hospitals. When he made his first delivery, on March 27 to a 25-bed hospital in Luray, he was taken aback by the reception. “They kind of conveyed to me that they were really forgotten about. Everyone was wanting to send donations to big city hospitals,” he said. “Every...

A passenger who caught a JetBlue flight from New York to Palm Beach had reportedly been told he tested positive for coronavirus moments before the plane took off. Florida officials announced early on Thursday that a man had tested positive for the virus. Passengers were forced to remain on Flight 253 for two additional hours as the aircraft stood on the tarmac instead of proceeding to gate C12 at the Palm Beach International Airport. Another passenger on the plane claimed the man's wife told him they had been told of the result before take off. The flight landed at 8.53pm...

BOSTON — A Tennesssee man on a nonstop, round-trip flight from Boston to Nashville is among three Biogen employees who tested positive for coronavirus, Gov. Charlie Baker said Thursday night. The Tennessee Department of Health earlier announced the case in an official release, saying the man on the flight had tested presumptive positive for COVID-19 in Tennessee. ...

The Boeing Starliner didn't see any testing shortcuts before its flawed flight test, officials said Friday, but the company vowed to expand tests in the future. Boeing (BA) stock fell. In December, the Boeing Starliner set off on an uncrewed test, but it failed to reach the International Space Station as planned because a software error prevented it from getting into the proper orbit. It was later revealed that an internal timer on the capsule was off by 11 hours, causing the Boeing Starliner to believe that it was further into the mission. Another software issue was found with the...

Speaking in a new documentary set to air this week, the former leader, who was PM when the plane disappeared over the South China Sea in 2014, said it was made “crystal clear” to him within a week that the aircraft was almost certainly deliberately downed by the pilot. “My understanding – my very clear understanding – from the very top levels of the Malaysian government is that from very, very early on here they thought it was a murder-suicide by the pilot,” Malaysia Airlines flight 370 was carrying 239 people including six Australians when it disappeared about 40 minutes...

The Marina City Council voted to approve the conditional use permit that allows Joby Aviation to test their prototype air taxis at the airport. The company wants to build a 580-thousand square foot manufacturing facility at the airport that will provide as many as 1,600 jobs to the regionThe Marina City Council voted to approve the conditional use permit that allows Joby Aviation to test their prototype air taxis at the airport. The company wants to build a 580-thousand square foot manufacturing facility at the airport that will provide as many as 1,600 jobs to the region

Boeing recently discovered some of its stored 737 MAXes have foreign objects in the fuel tanks. The entire fleet of 400+ newly produced but undelivered MAXes is being inspected. Foreign objects, called foreign object debris (FOD) in aviation parlance, consist of tools or rags. FOD has been found in the fuel tanks of some MAXes. MAXes are stored at four locations in Washington State and in San Antonio (TX). It’s unlikely that the FOD inspections will delay recertification or testing of the MAX. The FAA was informed by Boeing. It takes up to three days to inspect each airplane, LNA...

Boeing's 737 Next Generation airliners have been struck by a peculiar software flaw that blanks the airliners' cockpit screens if pilots dare attempt a westwards landing at specific airports. Amid the various well-reported woes facing America's largest airframe maker, yet another one has emerged from the US Federal Aviation Administration; a bug that causes all pilots' display screens in the 737-NG airliner family to simply go blank.

The skill of two pilots was captured on video as they landed the world's largest passenger plane sideways while battling heavy crosswinds at Heathrow Airport. The Etihad Airbus A380, which is flown by two pilots, can be seen hovering metres above the tarmac as it attempted to touchdown on Saturday during Storm Dennis.

The Russian Air Force is receiving six more MiG-31BM jet fighters, which apparently means the manufacturer has found and fixed the problems that this latest version of the MiG-31 was having. These are not new aircraft but refurbished and upgrades of existing MiG-31s. Russia wants to keep its elderly (production ended in 1994) MiG-31s in service until at least 2030 but to do that they had to be refurbished and upgraded to the MiG-31BM standard. The upgrade process began in 2010 but was halted in 2016 because of the accidents. Apparently the MiG-3BM upgrades resumed by 2018 but only a...

With a little help from a massive tailwind, of course. British Airways Boeing 747 traveled from New York to London in just four hours and 56 minutes, hitting a top ground speed of 825 miles per hour and setting a subsonic flight record for the route. That 250+ mph tailwind meant that the 747’s true airspeed was still below the speed of sound, but that doesn’t take away from how incredible it is to get across the Atlantic in just over four hours. It should be mentioned that while flight BA112 smashed the subsonic record, the fastest time from NYC...

Yes, Russia Once Had Its Own Version of the SR-71 Blackbird How did it end? ...Still, brilliant Soviet engineer Pavel Tsybin came close to developing a “Soviet Blackbird”—though it, in fact, predated the A-12/Blackbird by several years and was originally conceived as a nuclear bomber. By 1957, OKB-256 had built an NM-1 three-quarter-scale demonstrator equipped with two Mikulin AM-5 turbojets instead. After multiple delays, the subsonic test model made the first of 32 test flights on April 7, 1959. These revealed the airframe’s unstable takeoff handling and flight characteristics—meaning the jet needed to be re-engineered. Supposedly, three or five RSR-020s...

The pilot of the helicopter that crashed and killed Kobe Bryant and eight others was almost out of blinding clouds when he suddenly plunged and crashed into a Southern California hillside, investigators and aviation experts indicated. Ara Zobayan had told air traffic control he was climbing to 4,000 feet and he rose to 2,300 feet, according to an investigative update released Friday from the National Transportation Safety Board. The helicopter was just 100 feet from the cloud tops and conceivably would have broken through into clear air in a matter of seconds. Air traffic controllers had advised Zobayan that the...

An Airbus A320 airliner with 172 passengers on board has made an emergency landing in the Russian-controlled Khmeimim air base after Syrian air defenses nearly hit it, Russian news agencies have quoted a Defense Ministry spokesman as saying. The Syrian air defenses were trying to repulse an Israeli attack near Damascus, Igor Konashenkov was quoted as saying on February 7. According to Konashenkov, after 2 a.m., four Israeli F-16 fighter jets fired at targets in the suburbs of Damascus without entering Syrian airspace. During the attack, a passenger plane with 172 passengers on board en route from Tehran to Damascus...

Cathay Pacific is asking all of its 27,000 employees to take three weeks of unpaid leave over the coming months, the company’s CEO told staff on Wednesday, as Hong Kong’s flagship carrier reels from the impact of the deadly coronavirus on air travel. “I am appealing to each and every one of you to help,” said Augustus Tang Kin-wing in a taped video recording, adding the situation the company faced was “just as grave” as the global financial crisis of 2009. “Preserving our cash is now key to protecting our business,” he said. Cathay wants staff to take leave on...

Airline pilots see plenty of weird things while flying passengers from one place to another, but most of it occurs in the plane's cabin. However, what one pilot spotted outside of his plane has a lot of people talking. His name is Cesar and he flies Airbus A320s for Viva Air, a low-cost Colombian airline. While soaring over Medellin recently, Cesar saw a strange craft and decided to film it. He then shared the footage on TikTok. Skeptics claim it is just a weather balloon and isn't even moving - it just looks to be speeding along because of the...

The Army's helicopters have a number of names you recognize immediately: Apache, Black Hawk, Kiowa, Lakota, Comanche. They are also known as the names of Native American tribes. This is not a coincidence. According to GlobalSecurity.org, this was originally due to Army Regulation 70-28, which has since been rescinded. Today, while the regulation is gone, the tradition remains, and there is a procedure to pick a new name. The Bureau of Indian Affairs keeps a list of names for the Army to use. When the Army gets a new helicopter (or fixed-wing aircraft), the commanding officer of the Army Material...