Warbirds

A sequel to Top Gun, the popular movie about pilots in the U.S. Navy flight school, will begin shooting sometime in the next year, actor Tom Cruise told reporters last week. Asked about the rumors during the Australian morning show “Sunrise,” Cruise said, “It is definitely happening.” No other details were released by Cruise or […]

Several upcoming airshows in the U.S. and Canada have been canceled, following an announcement Monday evening that the Canadian Forces’ Snowbirds have temporarily suspended air show performances. The team made the announcement on its Facebook page, following an appearance at the Memphis (Tenn.) Airshow. “A reduced training period hampered by poor weather which continued into […]

The restored B-29 Doc made its airshow debut on Saturday, in the Defenders of Liberty Airshow at Barksdale Air Force Base, in Louisiana. “What was really special for us, we were able to meet up with a B-52 in flight, over Oklahoma,” Josh Wells, spokesman for Doc’s Friends, told AVweb this week. “That was majestic. […]

While military aircraft boneyards are nothing new, the YouTube display of the hulks of some ex-Navy fighters in an undeveloped area of Temple, Texas, may be causing some concerns at the Pentagon. A video has emerged of the scattered remains of two F-14 Tomcats and an F-4 Phantom. The aircraft have been stripped of just […]

Breitling’sDC-3, which first flew in 1940, is now engaged in a round-the-world tour, with a summertime trip across the U.S. in the flight plan. The airplane, which once flew for American Airlines and the U.S. Army, was bought by Breitling in 2008 and fully restored. At 77 years old, it’s the oldest airplane ever to […]

Of the 19 aircraft that set out from Crete, Greece, on Nov. 12, 14 survivors of the Crete2Cape Vintage Air Rally arrived in Cape Town, South Africa, after 8,000 miles and over a month of flying. The pre-WWII aircraft were the first to land at the Egyptian Pyramids at Giza in 80 years and the […]

Fans of the restored B-29 “Doc,” which flew last July after 16 years of effort by scores of volunteers in Wichita, have long yearned for the chance to see the airplane fly at EAA AirVenture, hopefully in formation with the only other flying B-29, the CAF’s FiFi. Doc’s Friends aren’t saying yet if that historic […]

B-29 Doc has been cleared for takeoff at airshows across the country. Doc’s Friends announced last week the FAA has granted them a special airworthiness certificate for the enormous Second World War bomber. The new status means the end of the first phase of flight test operations and removes many of the accompanying flight restrictions. […]

The Air Force marked the end of almost 60 years of service of the F-4 Phantom with a ceremony at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico just before Christmas. The last flying Phantom took off to assume its final role as a ground target for training pilots in more modern platforms. Holloman has been […]

If Santa did a flypast of your hangar this year, you could go after him at Mach 1.3 in your own CF-5 Freedom Fighter. The little fighter, based on Northrop’s design, was built under license by Canadair in the 1960s and 1970s and this aircraft is being sold by a private owner in St. Augustine, […]