(Dassie Persaud-van der Westhuizen) My nascent airline career may have been halted by the COVID-19 pandemic – but it will restart. A question that bothers me in the meanwhile is whether airlines will be able survive the pressure by the environmentalists who love to use air travel – and itsRead More →

Des Barker Ask any SAAF fighter pilot that has flown high performance jets what his favourite aircraft was and the answer will in all likelihood be the Mirage F1, whether the interceptor version, the Mirage F1CZ, or the ground attack version, the F1AZ.  There is no doubt that Dassault’s swept-wing Mirage F1Read More →

Constantly changing COVID-19 regulations world-wide are causing disruptions, often with no warning. Requirements for boarding need to be checked regularly with the airline, as well as the specific country entry requirements. Flights into and out of South Africa are still not normalised, and extra care is need when booking. LufthansaRead More →

The Yakovlev Yak-130 (Mitten) is a subsonic two-seat advanced jet trainer, light fighter and potential light attack aircraft, able to replicate characteristics of Russian 4th and 5th generation fighters. In the early 1990s, the Soviet government asked the industry to develop a new aircraft to replace the Czech-made Aero L-29 DelphinRead More →

The Rockwell B-1 Lancer is a supersonic variable-sweep wing, heavy bomber used by the United States Air Force. It is one of three strategic bombers  in the U.S. Air Force fleet as of 2020, the other two being the B-2 Spirit and the B-52 Stratofortress. The B-1 was first envisioned in the 1960s asRead More →

The Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor is the result of a project that began all the way back in 1981. The Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor is a single-seat, twin-engine, all-weather stealth tactical fighter aircraft developed for the United States Air Force. The result of the USAF’s Advanced Tactical Fighter (ATF) program, theRead More →