Avro Arrow fans

A thousand years ago a hugely expensive Canadian aeroplane was cancelled. Today its memory is kept alive in a million Canadian moans.

Bombs

Deconstruction workers. Human unbeingers.

Crashes

When the sky rejects, the ground welcomes too quickly.

Dresden

RAF Bomber Command was overly eager to inspire Kurt Vonnegut.

Environmental damage

Maybe not as bad as cars, but still.

F-35 online articles

If every online article on the F-35 was laid end-to-end and made of gold they would cost the same as the F-35 programme, or they would if its actual price was known.

Flying Cars

Are they a shit car or a shit plane? Or both?

German World War II aircraft enthusiasts

Not all, but some of these guys are a little too enthusiastic. Worth checking the name of their alsatian before meeting them one-on-one.

Grey planes

The most successful fighter pilot in history flew a bright red plane, air forces responded by painting all fighters grey. Grey is the English word for ‘gray’.

Heinkel He 177 Greif 

Auto-Destructive Art (ADA) is a form of art coined by Gustav Metzger, a German artist. Taking place after World War II, Metzger wanted to showcase the destruction created from the war through his self-destructing artwork. The He 177 predated Metzger’s work.

Ilyushin Il-2 penal units

It is alleged that there were penal units in the Great Patriotic War, in which prisoners were forced to fly exceptionally dangerous combat missions.

Jokes

Jokes about airline food.

Kits

It’s often assumed people who like aeroplanes like making model kits. Extremely fiddly, fragile and frustrating and in no way sympathetic to the sausage-fingered community these little nightmares mostly remain uncompleted. Pocket money is not enough to buy them leaving many in a long suspended state of unsatisfied childhood greed for kits that may last them a lifetime.

Lisbon Portela Airport, Portugal

A site specific art installation exploring the end of hope.

Militarism

The belief that a country should maintain a military capability it can’t afford and be prepared to use it aggressively to aid US foreign policy or promote extremely vague ‘national interests’. The latter is a fine idea as long as no-one else thinks of it and ethics aren’t a thing.

Nationalism & napalm

Flag-wanking and people-melting consistently generate poor reviews on Yelp. Both have both been hung on the wings of innocent aeroplanes whose only wish is to fly.

Obsession

The reason your home isn’t nice is because you have spunked £56,000 on books on aeroplanes. Are you really actually ever going to read that book on the History of Airbus A300 Longerons?

Project Pluto

Stick a nuclear ramjet in a cruise missile. The idea was simple: With an endurance measured in weeks (or even months) this Cold War weapon could distribute nuclear warheads before leisurely cruising around pissing deadly radiation over huge areas of cursed land before crashing to earth to heap misery upon the already widespread misery as its own onboard nuclear reactor disintegrates. This was clearly the worst idea ever (only to be surpassed when Apple stopped including USB or headphone ports on their devices).

Pedantancy & pollution & patriotism

Point-scoring pedants permeate plane places, planes pollute particularly pertinent places with pesky particulates, patriots partial pestering perturbs people.

Quasi-experts arguing on Twitter

Stop arguing and feed the cat. Life is good. Take a breath.

Ryanair

Many airlines have proved it is possible to run successful budget airlines without treating passengers badly. Some have other ideas.

Soviet airliners

What was good about them was that you put your bag directly into an onboard luggage level rather than mess around waiting for carousels. But that’s all. At smaller regional airports it wasn’t unusual for passengers to physically help move aircraft stuck in snow or mud.

TSR-2 fans

A pint of bitter and a pint of bitterness. It was a nuclear bomber for godsake, not a murdered ballerina.

Underwater Aircraft Carriers

There is a reason whales don’t give birth to eaglets.

Volksjäger (He 162 Salamander)

Made by slaves to be flown by children to defend a fascist power, the He 162 was an awful thing. It escaped prosecution however by fleeing to America before having radical plastic surgery to emerge years later as the A-10.

Waiting times (airports)

Being encouraged to arrive unnecessarily early to be force-marched through a perfume shop is not cool guys.

X planes without pilots

If there’s not a little man or woman jn the front I’m not interested.

You

See also ‘me’

Zeppelin Raids & Zoom lenses

‘Strategic bombing’ (mass murder performed at over 80mph) started in World War One against Belgium. These raids paved the way for the horrors of aerial bombing in World War II. It also paved the way for the success of the lamentable cockney song ‘Roll out the barrel’ (years later, the lyrics were changed to ‘roll out the barrel bomb’ by crews of Antonovs in protracted proxy wars).

Airshows are breeding grounds for cargo shorts and zoom lenses as long as a Volvo estates, it’s a little known fact that airshow aircraft only perform dramatically fast take-offs to escape these aesthetic blunders.