What’s that abandoned aircraft in Umm Al Quwain?

The plane is a Soviet Ilyushin Il-76 cargo plane. Currently it has an advert on the side for the Palma Beach Hotel, but its past is something far more interesting. According to the Aero Transport Data Bank the aircraft was built in 1975 in part of the Soviet Union that is now Uzbekistan. In the…

Why was the SR-71 retired?

On July 28, 1976, flying out of Beale Air Force Base in California, a two-man crew comprising Capt. Eldon W. Joersz and Maj. George T. Morgan took off in a Lockheed SR-71 “Blackbird”. On this flight, they reached speeds of 2,194 mph (3,529.56 km/h) which to this day is still an airspeed record. But around…

Will super-sonic travel ever return?

It seems strange that technology has progressed in almost every field, but in supersonic travel things have seemingly regressed. Concorde was flying people faster than the speed of sound back in 1976, but since its retirement in 2003 there has been no commercial supersonic flight. Why not, and please can we have it back? The…