The last Boeing 727 ever built is still airworthy and has a very important job (clue in the livery!). In this video you can see the combination of a team of three awesome aviators + 75t of deliciously analogue trijet skim the North Sea at 150ft and 170mph. Many thanks to @2Excel_Aviation and @oilspillexperts for this unique insight into their super cool ops!

Stiff jet stream stretching out the high altitude clouds above the South of England this afternoon…

In this fresh Design Deep Dive I tell the story of how the Soviets and the Japanese copied the DC-3 in the 1930s. I spent a zillion hours on this, so I hope that someone with a similar obsession with aviation history will find it interesting! youtu.be/xbnMeSoo97A

If aircraft aerodynamics is close to your heart and you’d like to be involved in the development of the next generation of transports, the good folk in Filton have some rather appealing-looking vacancies ag.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/Air…

“We asked for proof of life. It sent the shape of listening” There is actually something hauntingly beautiful about this.

Our growing Astronautics research group is hiring at Assistant/Associate Prof level - details here: jobs.soton.ac.uk/Vacancy.asp…

And, responding promptly to literally zero requests, here is another picture of that late mark Spit landing at EGLF.

Looking through the pictures I took at #FIA2026, one aircraft keeps jumping out at me. The belle of the ball: the Bombardier Global 8000. Leaving the eye-watering performance (M.95, 8,000nm, FL500) aside for a moment, isn’t every angle on this thing strikingly pretty?

What a way to end a flying display… Rolls-Royce’s PR XIX Spitfire touching down at Farnborough #FIA2026. Nothing completes a nice, warm English summer afternoon like the sounds of an RR Griffon…

Menacing! Heavy helicopter traffic at Farnborough as the British Army Air Corps display team (Wildcat and two Apaches) depart #FIA2026

The @BETA_aircraft CX300 - throwing about four Tesla Model 3s equivalent of battery packs around the skies above #FIA2026. I was expecting some flypasts - instead we got some serious bank angles and a fun display tightly packed around Farnborough’s display datum. Impressive!

And speaking of the sounds of #FIA2026, I genuinely don’t know what to make of the engine note of the Hongdu L-15 trainer (x7 here, courtesy of the UAEAF display team). Four distinct sharp peaks in the spectrum I recorded with my phone, 1kHz apart….

It is hard to convey just how quiet the Vertical Aerospace demonstrator is through all phases of flight. I must admit that I used to be skeptical about noise claims around eVTOL, but this is impressive.

For fans of rectangular aviation, the F-35A square loop #FIA2026

This #FIA2026 feels like a turning point - for the first time in longer than I can remember, the flying display included two crewed aircraft without a hint of ‘business as usual’ - all-electric drivetrains and planforms from the ‘it’s just a conceptual cartoon, they’ll never actually build that’ category...

Another star of today’s #FIA2026 flying display, the @BETA_aircraft/@GE_Aerospace turbo-electric demonstrator - it is a Saab 340B, on which the starboard GE CT7 is assisted by battery electric powertrain (note the additional air ducts on the nacelle and on the fuselage).