The United States Federal Aviation Administration published a mandatory airworthiness directive on 14 May 2026 requiring operators of all Airbus A350-900 and A350-1000 aircraft to address an undocumented change in a key maintenance specification that could compromise emergency oxygen delivery during a cabin pressurisation failure. The directive takes effect on 18 June 2026, giving airlines fewer than five weeks to achieve compliance.
Play the audio and write down everything you hear. Listen as many times as you need. Then use the answer key below to check your work. This is a full dictation — write every word.
Continue reading Listening: Turbulent Approach to Dublin
The passive voice reverses the usual sentence structure: instead of saying who performed an action, it focuses on what was done — and often omits the actor entirely. Active: “Boeing confirmed the deal.” Passive: “The deal was confirmed by Boeing.” In formal prose the agent (by Boeing) is usually dropped, since the action or outcome is the point, not who carried it out.
Continue reading Structure: ‘The passive voice in formal writing’
You’re going to hear about an incident at a European airport involving an aircraft just after takeoff. Listen carefully for what happened, what the crew did about it, and how the situation ended.
Continue reading Listening: Bird Strike on Departure from Porto
In a significant breakthrough for both US-China commercial aviation and Boeing’s strained global order book, President Donald Trump announced on 14 May 2026 that China had agreed to purchase 200 Boeing commercial aircraft. The deal, confirmed by Boeing on 16 May, represents the planemaker’s first major re-entry into the Chinese market in nearly a decade, having been effectively locked out following a combination of the 737 MAX crisis, diplomatic tensions, and successive tariff rounds. With Trump suggesting the order could ultimately rise to 750 aircraft, the agreement stands as one of the more consequential commercial outcomes of his summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Continue reading China Orders 200 Boeing Jets in Trump’s Trade Deal
A time clause is a dependent clause that tells us when something happened. It is introduced by a time conjunction such as when, before, after, while, or as soon as. On its own a time clause is incomplete — it always attaches to a main clause to show how two events are related in time.
Continue reading Structure: ‘Time clauses’