Photo: Imaginechina (AP) Building a commercial airliner is a task so monumental that there are only two significant manufacturers in the world, Airbus and Boeing. However, the People’s Republic of China hopes to break into the multi-billion dollar market with its first domestically-produced large passenger aircraft, the Comac C919. After 14 years of development and […]
Why Retired Planes Are Still Worth Millions of Dollars
The utilitarian design and the rivets holding everything together can make it feel like airliners are built to last forever. Despite this illusion of longevity, a commercial airliner can expect to last around 27 years in service. But once they leave an airline’s fleet, there are still millions of dollars worth of components hidden in […]
Alaska Flight School is Turning a Boeing 727 Into Student Dorms
What was your student dorm like? Mine was a bland, bottom-floor apartment with gray walls, a tiny shared kitchen and a distinct lack of soundproofing. For pupils at a flight school in Alaska, their campus housing is about to get a whole lot more exciting, as the school prepares to convert an old Boeing 727 into […]
Boeing Argues There Was No Pain or Suffering in 737 Max Crash
We’re one week past the four-year anniversary of the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, which went down in Ethiopia shortly after takeoff on March 10, 2019, killing all 157 people onboard. It was the second crash involving a Boeing 737 Max airplane, occurring just a few months after Lion Air Flight 610 went down […]