Free Republic

The jet belonging to climate czar John Kerry's family made its way to Idaho, where he and his wife have reportedly vacationed, as he traveled in Asia to promote the Biden administration's message on the issue. Flight records show that the jet left Boston late afternoon and landed in Hailey, Idaho, later that evening. It's unclear what the trip was for but the Idaho Press reported last year that he and his wife, Teresa, have been part-time residents in the nearby Sun Valley for decades. According to the State Department, the former secretary of state is currently on a trip...

A Marine Corps fighter jet collided in mid-air with another plane during a refueling operation in a remote desert area of Southern California Tuesday afternoon. But the pilot ejected and the other aircraft landed safely, the military said. The F-35B jet collided with a Lockheed Martin KC-130J tanker around 4 p.m., according to a statement from the Marine Corps Air Station Yuma in nearby Arizona. The other plane reportedly had eight crew members on board. None were injured.

The Air Force Secretly Designed, Built, and Flew a Brand-New Fighter Jet And it all happened in just one year. Yes, that's mind-blowing. The U.S. Air Force revealed this week that it has secretly designed, built, and tested a new prototype fighter jet. The fighter, about which we know virtually nothing, has already flown and “broken records.” (The image above is Air Force concept art from 2018). The Air Force must now consider how it will buy the new fighter as it struggles to acquire everything from intercontinental ballistic missiles to bombers. The Air Force’s head of acquisition, Will Roper,...

The whispers started three years ago. A mysterious bullet-shaped plane was spotted at the Southern California Logistics Airport near Victorville in April 2017. Its unusual design prompted immediate speculation, with military website The War Zone being the first to report that the aircraft was the work of California-based Otto Aviation -- and that development was very much under wraps. Someone looking for an ID of an unusual looking aircraft spotted at the Southern California Logistics Airport. https://t.co/83J7RqOpvy pic.twitter.com/eAPrXNwIEf — John Wiseman (@lemonodor) April 16, 2017 Now, in the late summer of the strangest year in aviation history, the Celera 500L...

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 fellow employees, who had organized a joyride in a Dassault Rafale B jet for him as a treat. Once the man arrived at the Saint-Dizier air base in northeastern France and realized what his co-workers had arranged, he began to feel extremely stressed, according to a fairly remarkable aviation...

How dare you!

Elizabeth Warren is spotted getting off a private jet in Iowa - as Trump supporters accuse her of trying to hide behind a staffer when she realizes she's being filmed. Senator Elizabeth Warren was spotted getting off a private plane ahead of the Iowa caucus - with Trump supporters accusing her of trying to hide when she realized she was being filmed. The Democratic presidential candidate touched down in Des Moines on Monday on the private jet ahead of the caucus. Footage obtained by Fox News showed the 70-year-old stepping off the plane with several campaign staffers. The Massachusetts senator...

Kiev (AFP) - Ukraine's president on Monday urged Tehran to hand over the black box flight recorders of a passenger plane mistakenly shot down by Iranian forces during a spike in tensions with Washington. President Volodymyr Zelensky met Iran's Minister of Roads and Urban Development Mohammad Eslami in Kiev after Tehran suggested it would keep the black boxes. Zelensky told the minister "Ukraine has the technical capacity and experienced specialists" to read the information on the Boeing flight recorders, the presidency said in a statement. Iranian "representatives" would shortly travel to Ukraine "to acquaint themselves with those technical capacities. "The...

Tourists could fly from Britain to Australia in just four hours by the 2030s with a new hypersonic engine being developed by UK scientists, the head of the UK Space Agency has said. Reaction Engines, who are based in Oxfordshire, are in the process of building a hybrid hydrogen air-breathing rocket that will allow a plane to fly at Mach 5.4 - more than twice the speed of Concorde - then speed up to to Mach 25 in space. Not only would the new ‘Sabre’ engine allow speedier journeys - with a flight between London and New York slashed to...

Crews are searching for the pilot of a U.S. Navy fighter jet that crashed in Death Valley National Park, injuring seven people who were at a scenic overlook where aviation enthusiasts routinely watch military aircraft speeding low through a chasm dubbed Star Wars Canyon, officials said. A search was underway for the pilot of the single-seat F/A-18 Super Hornet that was on a routine training mission... The lookout point about 160 miles (257 kilometers) north of Los Angeles is popular with photographers and aviation buffs who gawk at jets flying in the steep, narrow canyon. Officials closed the area after...

June 18 (UPI) -- Israeli start-up Eviation showed off its all-electric airliner Tuesday at the Paris Air Show, and said a U.S. carrier has already made an order. Company CEO Omer Bar-Yohay said the plane, called Alice, is the first of its kind in the world. "The first all-electric commuter aircraft in the world, and it's out here ready and waiting," he told reporters. Eviation displayed a prototype of the nine-seat plane at Paris' Le Bourget Airport. It's designed to fly as fast as 650 miles per hour and has a cruise speed of 276 miles per hour. The goal,...

Al Arabiya reported that the Hafter controlled Libyan National Army has said that they have confirmed that the military jet they shot down south of Tripoli belonged to the EU’s Operation Sophia and that they will immediately return its foreign Portuguese pilot. Operation Sophia is part of an EU effort to monitor illegal immigration from Libya to the EU. A Libyan National Army spokesperson said that "We will deliver the Portuguese pilot to his country immediately after the treatment of his wounds and we appreciate the work of our European brothers in the fight against illegal immigration." “We care about...

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - A commercial jet carring 142 people went down in the St. Johns River near NAS Jacksonville on Friday, according to the Jacksonville Fire Rescue Department. All people on board were alive and accounted for, according to Fire Rescue and the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office. The plane was said to be a 737 airplane. These photos were shared by the Sheriff's Office:

One of Russia's richest women has died in a light aircraft crash in Germany. Airline tycoon Natalia Fileva, 55, the co-owner of Russian carrier S7, was on board a six-seater plane which crashed and exploded near Frankfurt today. German police said there appeared to be three people on board the plane, including the pilot of the flight, which originated in France. Two more people are believed to have died in a collision with a police vehicle which was responding to the scene. Business publication Forbes.ru estimated Ms Fileva's fortune at $600million (£460million), calling her Russia's fourth-richest woman.

"Why risk a helicopter and crew when it is possible to insert operators by swarm?" JetPack Aviation asks, using this concept art to illustrate just such an insertion. (JetPack Aviation) ==================================================================== The 20th century was rough on cavalry. While the age of battlefield dominance by horse-borne fighters had long since passed, scouting and charging from horseback remained a part of warfare, especially irregular warfare; that is until trenches, barbed wire, machine guns and armored vehicles rendered that use for horses mostly irrelevant. Cavalry regiments traded in their mounts for armored vehicles, and for the most part the dream of nimble...

Full title: DGCA lays down the law , says no Boeing 737 MAX aircraft will be allowed to enter, transit Indian airspace An official of aviation watchdog DGCA (Directorate General of Civil Aviation), on Wednesday, said that all Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft in India will be grounded by 4 pm today.  According to news agency PTI, the regulator, which on Tuesday, decided to immediately ground the aircraft amid global concerns following the Ethiopian Airlines crash that killed 157 people, including four Indians, shall ground all the Bowing 737 MAX 8 aircraft in India by 4 pm. The planes will...

In 1988, a US warship shot down an Iranian commercial plane, killing all onboard. The American captain and his crew were hailed as heroes, Scotland suffered, Libyans were punished, and we are still living with the effects today. It began when Iraq invaded Iran on September 22, 1980. America sided with Iraq, and by the time it ended on August 20, 1988, about a million people were dead. What ended the war, however, was an event that took place in the Strait of Hormuz. As the world gets 20% of its oil through this maritime route, the Iraq-Iran War extended...

A Turkish Airlines flight journeying from Panama City to Istanbul, Turkey, took the brazen step of flying an additional 800 miles outside its usual flightpath, but passengers onboard might have otherwise been oblivious. The re-route was a huge divergence from its usual trajectory across the Atlantic and through the Mediterranean, but thanks to excess windspeed harnessed by the jet stream, Flight 800 touched down on Turkish soil on time and unscathed. Wired first noticed the Airbus A330's arch-shaped journey on the website Flight Radar. On a mock-up rendering of the flight, the plane traverses the U.S. eastern seaboard before skirting...

Barack Obama's campaign has booted from its airplane three reporters who work for newspapers that have endorsed John McCain. The campaign says that a limited number of seats forced it to make the tough decision of which journalists would be permitted to follow the Democratic presidential candidate in the last four days of the campaign, but the papers are calling foul, claiming they were targeted for their editorial-page positions and kicked off while nonpolitical publications like Glamour and Jet magazines remained on board. Eliminated from the plane's traveling press were the Washington Times, the New York Post and the Dallas...

The plane landed safely at San Jose Mineta International Airport, about 50 miles south of San Francisco. The airline says the passenger accused of smoking was turned over to law enforcement. The remaining 32 passengers were placed on other aircraft to continue their trips. Passengers reported smelling smoke, and one said he smelled marijuana. “It looked like that someone needed to smoke a joint on a plane, and he went into the bathroom, smoked his blunt, and set off the fire alarm,” passenger Jonathan Burkes said.