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
A reporting verb is any verb that introduces what someone said, found, acknowledged, or recommended. In aviation English — especially in investigation reports and regulatory correspondence — these verbs carry considerable weight. They tell the reader not just that something was said, but how it was said and what it implies. Choosing between stated, acknowledged, and revealed is not a stylistic preference; each describes a different communicative act.
During the NTSB hearings on the Boeing MD-11 engine pylon failure in Louisville, every reporting verb shaped the reader’s interpretation: Boeing acknowledging that replacement had been framed as advisory is a very different thing from Boeing stating a technical fact.
Continue reading Structure: ‘Reporting verbs’
Skilled writers — particularly in journalism, safety reporting and academic prose — often replace full subordinate clauses with shorter participle clauses. The result is denser, more formal prose that packs context, cause and chronology into half the words.
Continue reading Structure: ‘Participle clauses’
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’A relative clause adds information about a noun by joining it to a second idea, so you avoid writing two short, choppy sentences. It usually begins with a relative pronoun — who, which, that, whose — or a relative adverb such as where or when. When the regulator confirmed that it had cleared electric air taxis to fly, almost every sentence in the coverage leaned on them.
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China has taken a significant step in its long campaign to loosen the grip of Airbus and Boeing on commercial aviation. On 28 May 2023, the COMAC C919 — the country’s first domestically marketed large passenger jet — completed its first commercial flight. The moment carried symbolic weight far beyond the short route it served.
Continue reading C919 Enters Service as China Challenges Airbus and Boeing