Human pilots, surrounded by automation.
Sorbis/Shutterstock.com
Pilots get lots of assistance from automation as it is. In the future, they’ll get even more.
An American Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 lands at LaGuardia Airport in New York on March 12, 2019.
EPA Images
The Boeing 737 is the most produced commercial aeroplane in history – so what might have gone wrong?
A Boeing 737 taxies at Manchester Airport in the United Kingdom.
nickyhardinguk/Pixabay
The 737 Max is the best-selling airliner ever. But two have crashed in five months, killing 346, damaging Boeing’s future and raising questions about the increasing sophistication of cockpit technology.
Steven Barrett/MIT
MIT researchers have built ion thrusters with no moving parts pave the way for silent drones.
A time-lapse image showing the plane flying across a gymnasium.
Steven Barrett, MIT
Ionic winds – charged particles flowing through the air – can move airplanes using only electricity; no propellers or jet engines needed. The scholar who led the project explains how it works.
Perth air traffic control tower. As a pilot flies towards the destination, the air traffic control tower sends an interrogation signal. The aircraft automatically responds with a series of short pulses that let air traffic control know the identity of the plane and its altitude.
© Copyright Airservices Australia
Secondary radar is an important tool in the control of aircraft traffic, and helps make air travel safe. It was developed during dangerous times.
The importance of check lists.
Shutterstock/lillolillo
One of the biggest problems with single-pilot operations is that it’s very difficult to self-diagnose errors. That’s why checklists can help.
Airbus Perlan Mission II surpasses U.
New research shows how smart aircraft can learn to use updrafts of warm air to stay in the sky.
Moviegoers familiarize themselves with the joystick that will allow them to interact with the film ‘I’m Your Man’ during its premiere on Dec. 16, 1992.
AP Photo/Richard Harbus
Sound, color and special effects transformed the moviegoing experience. These inventions decidedly did not.
Made Nagi / EPA
And will the aviation sector implement vital lessons learned from Icelandic disruption in 2010?
One of the new Qantas Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft arrives on its first flight into Sydney.
AAP Image/Dean Lewins
Airlines want to stretch their routes even longer with non-stop flights to almost anywhere in the world.
When is it too hot to fly?
Dmitri Fedorov/Shutterstock.com
Major airports around the world will see more frequent flight restrictions in the coming decades because of increasingly common hot temperatures.
Everything to everyone – or is the F-35 a big expense for not much benefit?
U.S. Air Force/Alex R. Lloyd
The most expensive defense program in world history has yielded a multi-role fighter plane that is an inelegant jack-of-all-trades, but master of none.
Looking in the wrong place? The search for missing flight MH370.
AAP IMAGE/Reuters Pool, Richard Polden
Oceanographers say they have the “credible new information” authorities need to resume the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.
Visitors look at the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jet at the Avalon Airshow 2017, Victoria.
AAP Image/Tracey Nearmy
The new Joint Strike Fighter will make its first appearance before an Australian crowd this weekend. But how close to being operational is the new fighter aircraft?
Andrey Khachatryan / shutterstock
Most passengers have no idea how bad air travel is for the environment.
It’s all fun and games until someone cops a fine.
Dmitry Kalinovsky/shutterstock.com
All over the country, novice drone pilots are launching their new Christmas presents skywards. But do they all know the rules? Here’s a primer.
What a novelty: Qantas chief Alan Joyce and WA Premier Colin Barnett announce the new non-stop route.
AAP Image/Angie Raphael
Qantas’s new non-stop route from Perth to London might be a watershed for travel times between Australia and Europe. But super-long-haul routes won’t do much to cut aviation’s greenhouse emissions.
Juan Antonio S/EPA
The crash near Medellin killed 75 people, including many members of a top Brazilian football team, but amazingly left six survivors.
Boom
The president-elect’s taste for private jets could be just what the aviation industry needs.