India’s $13.9 billion aviation industry—projected to cater to over 300 million domestically by 2030—is a ticking time bomb. This July, in the sweltering heat at the Delhi High Court, additional solicitor general Aishwarya Bhati announced that new rules on pilot duty and rest periods would not be implemented this year …
Read More »Somehow, the Dog Situation on Airplanes Has Gotten Even Wilder
Americans love their pets. More than 60 percent of US households have them; more than half of pet owners say they’re as important to their families as any human. So maybe it makes sense that more people are taking their pets on flights. More than 1 million pets travel by …
Read More »The Paris Olympics Promised Flying Taxis—Here’s Why They Failed to Launch
In November 2022, Dominique Lazarski stood among a small crowd of people on the Pontoise airfield near Paris, watching a flying taxi trace wide circles in a clear blue sky after it took off for the first time from a working vertiport in France. Airborne, the vehicle looked like a …
Read More »Here’s What the Inside of an Airbus Factory Looks Like
This story originally appeared on WIRED Italia and has been translated from Italian. This is the most important moment in the life of an airliner: when the new owner signs for it and picks it up, much like a driver picking up a new car from a dealer. The aircraft …
Read More »The Pentagon Is Planning a Drone ‘Hellscape’ to Defend Taiwan
It has become conventional wisdom among the halls of the United States government that China will launch a full-scale invasion of Taiwan within the next few years. And when that happens, the US military has a relatively straightforward response in mind: Unleash hell. Speaking to The Washington Post on the …
Read More »CrowdStrike Faces a Potential Tsunami of Lawsuits. Only the Fine Print Can Save It, Experts Say
On July 19, Jonathan Cardi and his family watched as the departures board at Raleigh-Durham International Airport in North Carolina, turned from green to a sea of red. “Oh my gosh, it was insane,” says Cardi. “Delayed, delayed, delayed, delayed.” Cardi, a law professor at Wake Forest University and a …
Read More »Why the Global CrowdStrike Outage Hit Airports So Hard
Early Friday morning, a flawed software update from the security firm CrowdStrike took down Windows computers across the world. For the aviation industry, the outage created the kind of chaos usually reserved for sudden, catastrophic weather—except all over the world, all at the same time. The outage highlighted an assumed …
Read More »How Early Do You Really Need to Get to the Airport? It Depends
As an anxious traveler, I always arrive way too early to the airport. After sitting around for a while at my gate, I end up wandering back to the food court and shelling out too much for a cinnamon roll or some other ultraprocessed treat. There’s got to be a …
Read More »Amazon’s Delivery Drones Won’t Fly in Arizona’s Summer Heat
Amazon plans to start flying delivery drones in Arizona this year—but don't count on them to bring you a refreshing drink on a hot day. The hexacopter can’t operate when temperatures top 104 degrees Fahrenheit, or 40 degrees Celsius, the company says, and average daily highs exceed that for three …
Read More »How to Follow the Boeing Starliner Mission
It’s been a rough few years for Boeing, but now the company is about to fly closer to the sun than ever before. After nearly a decade of development and delays, the first crewed launch of the Boeing Starliner spacecraft finally has liftoff. Here’s how to follow its journey live. …
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