The best cabin screen is the one in your pocket

The best cabin screen is the one in your pocket

Three hours into an overnight flight, the cabin lights are down and nobody has looked at the large bulkhead monitor since the safety briefing. One passenger’s reading a tablet, another’s scrolling through short video clips on a phone, while a third is staring at his...
Keep Them Flying

Keep Them Flying

A Spitfire’s wingover goes something like this: you pull up, then drop the stick to the left, and the airplane does the rest. The instructor demonstrated the concept and said, “Ok, now you do one”. So, I took the stick, pulled up, and brought it back...
The second ending

The second ending

By the time your completed aircraft is delivered, you’ve spent years inside the decisions that made it.  And some of those decisions might seem, initially, almost unrelated to aviation. What car do you drive? How have you decorated your house? Where do you go...
The Two Clock Problem

The Two Clock Problem

Somewhere in the early part of a completion programme, there’s a meeting you’ll genuinely enjoy. After discussions around load paths and certification plans or earnest conversations about flammability testing, here’s the part that feels like the jet you...
Fifty Shades of Beige

Fifty Shades of Beige

There was a point in your life when owning a private jet was the single coolest thing you could imagine. You might have drawn it with crayons and given it flames down the side, probably, or lightning bolts, or your name in letters big enough to read from the ground....