On 15 June 1919, two exhausted British airmen climbed out of a wrecked biplane half-buried in a bog in County Galway — and into history. The day before, John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown had taken off from Newfoundland to attempt something no one had ever done: fly across the Atlantic Ocean without stopping. Our series Defining Moments in Aviation begins, fittingly for an Irish school, with a landing in Ireland.
Continue reading Aviation History: The First Non-Stop Flight Across the Atlantic
A cleft sentence takes a single idea and splits it into two clauses so that one element is thrown into sharp focus. (Cleft simply means “divided.”) Compare the flat statement The redesigned fuel system makes the route possible with the version a journalist might actually write: It is the redesigned fuel system that makes the route possible. The facts are identical; the second sentence just decides what you notice first.
Continue reading Structure: ‘Cleft sentences’
Look at the photograph above and describe what you can see. Try to speak for about a minute, moving from a general overview of the scene, to the details, and finally to speculation about what is happening and why. Use the words in the box to help you. If you are not sure how to structure your answer, read our guide on how to describe a picture.
dispersal · air stair · APU · ground crew · baggage · visibility
Qantas has edged closer to operating the longest commercial flights in the world. On 2 June 2026, the first Airbus A350-1000ULR built for the airline’s “Project Sunrise” took off from Toulouse on its maiden flight, an event that marks the beginning of the end of a programme the carrier has been pursuing for the better part of a decade.
Continue reading Qantas A350 Completes First Project Sunrise Test Flight
Every decision an airline makes has a goal behind it. When we want to explain the reason an action is meant to achieve — not what happened, but what it was for — we use a purpose clause. News reports are full of them: a carrier moves into a busy hub to attract business travellers, or trims its network so that it can keep costs down.
Continue reading Structure: ‘Purpose clauses’
Southwest Airlines has stopped flying from two of America’s busiest airports. From 4 June 2026, the low-cost carrier no longer serves Chicago O’Hare or Washington Dulles, and the final Southwest flights from both airports departed the day before. The move ends a roughly five-year experiment at two major hubs.
Continue reading Southwest Ends All Flights at O’Hare and Dulles