The pilot of a US F-35 jet ejected as his jet crashed on the deck of the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier in the South China Sea, injuring seven, the US Pacific Fleet said in a statement Monday.

The pilot was conducting routine flight operations when the crash happened. They safely ejected and were recovered by a military helicopter, Pacific Fleet said. The pilot is in stable condition.
Six others were injured on the deck of the carrier. Three required evacuation to a medical facility in Manila, Philippines, where they are in stable condition, according to Pacific Fleet. The other three sailors were treated on the carrier and have been released.The cause of what the statement called a "inflight mishap" is under investigation.

​A spokesman for the Navy's 7th Fleet in Japan, Lt. Mark Langford, said Tuesday the impact to the Vinson's flight deck was "superficial" and the warship and its air wing had resumed normal operations.As for the F-35, "the status of the recovery is in progress," Langford said.
The crash is the first for an F-35C, the US Navy's variant of the single-engine stealth fighter, designed for operations off aircraft carriers.

The F-35A, flown by the Air Force, takes off and lands on conventional runways, and the F-35B, the Marine Corps version, is a short-takeoff vertical landing aircraft that can operate off the Navy's amphibious assault ships.
Versions of the F-35 are also flown by US allies and partners, including Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom, Australia, Italy, Norway, the Netherlands and Israel. More countries have orders in for the jet.
The US Navy variant "features more robust landing gear to handle carrier takeoffs and landings, folding wings to fit on a crowded flight deck, larger wings, a slightly larger payload, and a slightly longer operating range," according to the aircraft's manufacturer, Lockheed Martin.
The F-35C was the last of the three variants to become operational, doing so in only 2019.
Carl Vinson was the first of the US Navy's 11 aircraft carriers to deploy with the F-35C when it left San Diego last August.
"This deployment marks the first time in U.S. naval aviation history that a stealth strike fighter has been deployed operationally on an aircraft carrier," Lockheed Martin said.
The addition of the F-35C to Carrier Air Wing 2 aboard Carl Vinson for its current deployment marks the first time a US carrier has flown with what the Navy calls its "air wing of the future," which also includes F/A-18E/F fighters, EA-18G electronic warfare aircraft, E-2D airborne early warning aircraft and CMV-22 tilt-rotor transports.

Monday's crash in the South China Sea was the second of an F-35 this year.
On January 4, the pilot of a South Korean F-35 made an emergency "belly landing" at an air base on Tuesday after its landing gear malfunctioned due to electronic issues, according to the South Korean Air Force.
In previous years, F-35s have been involved in at least eight other incidents, according to records kept by the crowdsourced website F-16.net.
Last November, a British F-35B crashed into the Mediterranean Sea off the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth. The pilot ejected safely.
In May 2020, the pilot ejected safely when a US Air Force F-35 crashed on landing at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. The Air Force attributed the crash to a variety of factors involving the pilot and the plane's systems.
In April 2019, a Japanese F-35 crashed into the Pacific Ocean off northern Japan, killing its pilot. The Japanese military blamed that crash on spatial disorientation, "a situation in which a pilot cannot sense correctly the position, attitude, altitude, or the motion of an airplane," according to the journal Military Medicine.
When the latest crash occurred, Carl Vinson and its escorts were operating in the South China Sea along with the USS Abraham Lincoln Strike Group in dual-carrier operations that began on Sunday, according to Navy social media accounts.
The 1.3 million-square-mile South China Sea has been the site of frequent naval activity in the past several years as China has asserted its claims over almost all of the area by building up and militarizing islands and reefs.
The US military asserts its right to operate freely in what are international waters. Carrier deployments like the current one exercise those rights.
The two strike groups along with a Japanese helicopter destroyer staged a large exercise on Saturday in the Philippine Sea, the part of the Pacific Ocean between Taiwan and the US island territories of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands.A day after that exercise, China sent 39 warplanes into Taiwan's self-declared air defense identification zone, the largest such incursion of Chinese warplanes into that zone this year.

A Washington-state based aerospace company has exited stealth mode by announcing plans to develop one of the holy grails of spaceflight—a single-stage-to-orbit space plane. Radian Aerospace said it is deep into the design of an airplane-like vehicle that could take off from a runway, ignite its rocket engines, spend time in orbit, and then return to Earth and land on a runway.
"We all understand how difficult this is," said Livingston Holder, Radian’s co-founder, chief technology officer, and former head of the Future Space Transportation and X-33 program at Boeing.
On Wednesday, Radian announced that it had recently closed a $27.5 million round of seed funding, led by Fine Structure Ventures. To date, Radian has raised about $32 million and has 18 full-time employees at its Renton, Washington, headquarters.
During an interview with Ars, Holder and Radian CEO Richard Humphrey explained that they realized it would require significantly more funding to build such an ambitious orbital space plane. Funding will pace their development efforts. For that reason, Humphrey said he was not comfortable putting a date on the company's first test flights but said that Radian was aiming to have an operational capability well before the end of the 2020s.
The current design of Radian One calls for taking up to five people and 5,000 pounds of cargo into orbit. The vehicle would have a down-mass capability of about 10,000 pounds and be powered by three liquid-fueled engines. The idea would be to get as close to airline operations as possible, by flying, landing, re-fueling, and flying again.
Since its founding in 2016, Radian has focused on the propulsion and structure of a vehicle that must withstand a variety of thermal and pressure environments. Humphrey said the company has built and tested its first "full-scale" engine. At full power, this cryogenic-fueled engine will have a thrust of about 200,000 pounds.
"We’re still in the leading edges of that work," Humphrey said. "We understand the fundamentals, we can start it, we can stop it, and we're taking a series of small, progressive steps to get to a full capability."

Humphrey, Holder, and the company's other co-founders, Curtis Gifford and Jeff Feige, have a variety of backgrounds at NASA, the US Department of Defense, and various new space companies. They plan to draw upon earlier work by NASA and contractors who have previously attempted to develop a single-stage-to-orbit spacecraft as well as XCOR, which sought to build a suborbital space plane but had to shut down about five years ago due to a lack of funding.
NASA's last serious attempt at building such a space plane came in the late 1990s, with its "Reusable Launch Vehicle Program," which led to the X-33 program. NASA eventually selected a design by Lockheed Martin for the X-33, but this program fizzled out in 2001 as Lockheed and NASA ran into technical problems, and NASA's priorities changed.
Much has changed in the last two decades to make private development of such a vehicle more feasible, Humphrey said. Lightweight aerospace composites were mostly experimental then but are a well-understood technology now. Space launch companies also now regularly "super chill" their liquid propellants to gain more performance during flight, which Radian plans to do.
And perhaps most importantly, in the wake of SpaceX's success with its launch program, there is ever more private capital flowing into spaceflight operations. This means it should be easier for Radian to raise the substantial amounts of money it will need to bring an orbital space plane on line—more than $1 billion, almost certainly—than it would have even five or 10 years ago.

"A long time has passed since the last true attempt at this," Holder said. "The technology has moved forward, and people are willing to fund projects like this."
If Radian can succeed technologically, large markets would likely open. A vehicle like Radian One would be well suited to fly people to commercial space stations in low Earth orbit, which NASA seeks to foster development of by 2030. These planes could also perform Earth observation work and play a role in bringing back space-manufactured goods. There is also the potential for point-to-point travel on Earth.
There can be no question that this is a hugely challenging endeavor that many people have tried before. Will Radian find the right stuff, at the right moment in time? We'd like to think so.

If you were unfortunate enough to scroll around your social media channels this weekend you probably realized that it was one that featured some truly bizarre catastrophes. But the one that happened this afternoon just after 2 PM local time near Whiteman Airport in Pacoima, California really takes the cake—or the locomotive in this case. 
A Cessna 172, registered N8056L, made an emergency landing (or lost control while landing) and ended up on railroad tracks between Osborne Street and San Fernando Road next to the airport. The injured pilot was pulled from the stricken Cessna by police and bystanders just an instant before a Metrolink train plowed through the aircraft, shattering it and sending pieces of it flying. LAPD has posted absolutely chilling bodycam footage of the rescue, which came in just the nick of time:
The pilot was rushed to the hospital and it isn't clear at this time what condition they are in, but the fact that they made it out alive is something of a miracle in itself. ​

​Around 1:40 p.m., Corpus Christi International Airport air traffic control received a distress call from a privately owned Piper-Cherokee aircraft saying they were above the clouds and unable to navigate through them to land safely, a news release from the Chief of Naval Air Training said.
Nearby pilots conducting a formation training in two T-6B Texan II training aircrafts over the Corpus Christi Bay were able to find a clear area for the Piper-Cherokee to get below the clouds. They then guided the aircraft to the opening in the clouds about six miles north of Naval Air Station Corpus Christi, where the pilot was able to land at the Mustang Beach Airport.

The Navy pilots flying the two T-6Bs were Lt. Cmd David Indiveri of Succasunna, New Jersey; Maine 1st Lt. Casey Joehnk of Port Orchard, Washington; Lt. Billy Morse of Tucson, Arizona; and Ensign Christophe Theodore of San Francisco, California, the release said. Theodore is a student pilot only two flights away from completing his primary flight training.
“While our primary role here is training future Naval Aviators, when emergencies arise, our pilots stand ready to answer the call,” Cmdr. Brian Higgins, commanding officer of VT-28 said in the release.


On. Nov. 15, pilots in the squadron helped search for and rescue a civilian pilot after a crash landing in Rockport.
“This is the second time in less than a month that our crews have answered that call to assist pilots in distress and potentially saved the lives of our fellow civilian aviators who share these skies with us every day. I am extremely proud of the Ranger flight crews and am glad they were the ones who got the call, because true to our squadron motto, 'Rangers Lead the Way.'"

Taken in January 1968 the impressive photo in this post features a CH-53 heavy-lift helicopter acting as a tug for USS Austin LPD-4 in Long Island Sound.
According to a post appeared on Twitter ‘After a Christmas and New Year leave period, Austin transported Underwater Demolition Team 21 to Key West, Florida in January 1968 for unit training, then visited San Juan and Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico and Port Everglades, Florida. This was followed by a visit to Bridgeport, Connecticut 12 through 23 February 1968 to participate in tests of the CH-53 helicopter with the Sikorsky Aircraft plant. Part of the test included Austin being towed by a CH-53 helicopter.’

Noteworthy, helicopters towing ships is not unique to the US Navy.
As the picture below shows, in 1957 a Westland Whirlwind (1 x 750 HP engine) towed the minesweeper HMS Gavington (c. 360 tons) as part of trials to show the utility of helicopters in salvage work, another Twitter user explains.

The Royal Navy (RN) also used to get the rowing boats out to tow becalmed ship’s.
As the following photo shows the US Coast Guard (USCG) used helicopters to tow boats too. Taken in 1958 the image shows a USCG Sikorsky HO4S Tugbird helicopter dragging the service buoy tender Juniper around the ocean off Florida.
​The HO4S was equipped with a winch, a rescue basket, and a roomy passenger compartment. It was ideal for search and rescue. According to Air & Space Magazine, by early 1958, 30 were stationed at U.S. coastal cities. Along the way, someone thought it might be a good idea to use the helicopter for towing vessels—fishing, pleasure, and other types—out of harm’s way.

In the blue skies over south-east England, young Pilot Officer John Hemingway felt completely alone. There may have been 3,000 aircrew who fought in the Battle of Britain, which began 80 years ago this week.
Yet thundering through summer skies surrounded by hundreds of Luftwaffe aircraft, the Hurricane pilot was sharply conscious he had only his own wits to rely on to stay alive.
“You need to appreciate, fighters had no crew, it was just you, a single fighter,” he explains.
“Squadrons got you into the battle, but in the battle, you did your own fighting.”
Today, Irishman John, known as Paddy, is, in the saddest sense, alone again – the only airman who fought in the Battle of Britain still alive.
The very last of Winston Churchill’s famous “few” about whom he said: “Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many.”

Around half of them lost their lives in the battle, which began on July 10, 1940. When John goes, the few will finally become none.
Now living in a care home in his native Dublin, set to turn 101 in one week’s time, he reflects on what he regards only as his “luck” to have survived the Battle of Britain, Adolf Hitler’s attempt to commandeer the skies before Operation Sealion – the planned Nazi invasion of Britain.


John was shot down twice during the three-and-a-half month battle and four times in total during the war. But he doesn’t enjoy sensationalising his part.
“Others write the history – we were doing our job,” he insists, recalling how emotion couldn’t come into it.
He says: “Everything happened very quickly but in slow motion during a dogfight. It was not a time for emotions, except for momentary anger. Too much emotion could be dangerous.

“And many a time you were too exhausted and drained to feel anything much, even fear. I just went on because every day, people were disappearing, new faces arriving, you didn’t know anybody, you were going into war with people you didn’t know.
“Do not forget, we were incredibly young, most of us were less than 23. So much was happening, it was just a matter of taking each day at a time.
“Death in combat is not democratic, you could never guarantee anything.”
He adds: “I am here because I have had some staggering luck and fought alongside great pilots in magnificent aircraft with ground crew in the best air force in the world.
“This was a long time ago and many are not here anymore. I am sad about that.”
​

This year has seen the final few falling fast.
In January, Wing Commander Paul Farnes, the last surviving ace of the battle, died aged 101. In May, Flight Lieutenant Terry Clark died soon after his 101st birthday.
The weight of legacy now weighs singly on John’s shoulders, but then he got used to that long ago.
The father of three and grandfather of seven was just a baby-faced 21 year-old when he took part in the Battle of Britain.
He had enlisted with the RAF in 1938, and saw action with 85 Squadron early over France.
By June 1940, back in England with the Squadron now under Group Captain Peter Townsend – later Princess Margaret’s lover – he was tasked with training inexperienced pilots.

In the early phases of the battle, the Luftwaffe concentrated on hitting ports and shipping routes in the Channel. But everything changed in August, when the Germans switched to attacking British airbases.
On August 18 – “the hardest day” when around 100 German and 136 British aircraft are believed to have been destroyed or damaged – John’s plane was hit by gunfire.
He was attacked by two aircraft over the North Sea and “started to spin”.
He recalls: “Everything in the cockpit was covered in oil, but the hood opened easily, and I could then see enough to regain control, at about 9,000ft.
“I set course for England, but my engine stopped. I had no wish to bail out, on the other hand I remembered that Hurricanes tipped up and sank when landed in the sea. In the event, I tried to climb out on the wing... but everything was so slippery I was blown straight off.


“My parachute opened perfectly, and I landed in the sea.”
John began to swim frantically “among jellyfish” until “a lifeboat bumped into me”. In fact, they had been searching for him for an hour and a half, and, deciding he could not survive the cold water, had turned back, only then knocking into him “rolling in the waves”.
Incredibly, John still managed to help them row back to shore.
Finally returning to his squadron two days later, he found himself surrounded by “unfamiliar faces” and discovered among the losses was a friend, Flight Commander Dickie Lee.
With rare emotion, he admits: “If anything affected me seriously, it was that. He was a wonderful person, I still say it, I still think it. And it was – you just did not believe. No, he was going to turn up. But he never did of course.”
Just eight days later, on August 26, John was shot down again.
An enemy formation of 15 Dornier 215s was flying at 15,000ft up the Thames and John’s squadron was scrambled to attack them head on. This time, cannon fire hit his engine.
​

“The hood opened easily, and I bailed out,” he recalls. “Remembering the enemy were shooting at parachutists, I did a delayed drop as far as the cloud before opening my parachute. I landed in Pitsea Marshes where the local Home Guard was, but I speak reasonably good English, so they didn’t shoot me.
“My sinus just about killed me for about four days.”
By September, the squadron was so decimated it was withdrawn.
John says: “Peter Townsend was in hospital, wounded, our commanders and their deputies were dead, and I think there were just seven of us still fully active out of the 18 starters.”
The RAF lost 1,250 aircraft in the battle, but their superior radar and flying technology helped them to victory.

He was saved by Italian partisans who smuggled him to safety dressed in peasant’s clothing. A local family lent him one of their children to walk him through a German checkpoint.
John survived the war and married wife Bridget. They had three children and she died in 1998. John retired from the RAF in 1969 as a Group Captain.
Pressed again how he managed to survive, John resists any acknowledgment of skill. Today, he maybe fragile, but that stiff upper lip remains firm. “Training gave you the right instincts to stay alive,” is all he will say.

A British F-35, one of the newest stealth fighter jets in the UK military, crashed into the Mediterranean Sea on Wednesday morning while operating off the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, the UK Defense Ministry said in a tweet.

The pilot ejected and was returned safely to the ship, and an investigation of the incident, which occurred during routine flight operations, had begun, the ministry said.
Britain operates the F-35B, a single-engine, short-take-off vertical landing variant of the US-developed stealth jet, which cost about $115 million each to build.
In June, F-35s operating off the Queen Elizabeth flew combat missions over the Middle East against ISIS, the first combat action for a UK aircraft carrier in more than a decade.

With plans to acquire 138 F-35s, Britain would be the third-largest operator of the Lockheed-Martin produced jets, behind the United States and Japan.Both the US and Japan have lost F-35s to accidents.
In September 2018, a US Marine Corps F-35B crashed in South Carolina, the first-ever crash of an F-35.
In April 2019, a Japanese F-35A crashed into the Pacific Ocean off northern Japan, killing its pilot. The Japanese Defense Ministry later attributed that crash to spatial disorientation, meaning the pilot couldn't sense his surroundings adequately and essentially flew the stealth fighter straight into the ocean during the night training mission.
In May 2020, a US Air Force F-35A crashed in Florida during routine training, but the pilot ejected safely.
After the crash Wednesday, the manufacturer of the F-35's ejection seat, British company Martin-Baker, touted its hardware. "We've saved 7,662 air crew lives from around the world to date," the company said on its Twitter page. Martin-Baker's ejection seats are used on a range of aircraft, not just F-35s.
The British crash comes on the last leg of a voyage for Queen Elizabeth, leading what the UK calls Carrier Strike Group 21, that saw it go as far as Japan and South Korea to participate in exercises with allies and partners as the Royal Navy tries to increase its global presence.

When the strike group departed the UK in the spring, Britain's Ministry of Defense described it as the largest concentration of maritime and air power to leave British shores in a generation.
US and Dutch warships are part of the strike group, and 10 US Marine Corps F-35s have been operating off the Queen Elizabeth along with eight British stealth jets.
When a version of this carrier strike group sailed together during military exercises off Scotland last fall, the UK Defense Ministry said it carried "the largest concentration of fighter jets to operate at sea from a Royal Navy carrier since HMS Hermes in 1983."
It also said it was "the largest air group of fifth-generation fighters at sea anywhere in the world." Fifth-generation fighters are the most advanced warplanes in the air.There was no immediate word on whether the UK would try to recover the wreckage of the F-35 from the Mediterranean.
When the Japanese F-35 crashed in 2019, there was speculation the wreckage could be a target for potential adversaries such as Russia and China who could gain access to its advanced technology. But both the US and Japan dismissed that idea.

he dream of getting an F-14 Tomcat back up in American skies, discussed as a fantasy for the past two decades since the Navy retired the type, may actually become a reality.
Legislation making its way through Congress would allow the Navy to gift three retired F-14Ds to the U.S. Space & Rocket Center museum in Huntsville, Alabama, and open the door to one of the iconic jets potentially being returned to flight status. Companion bills in the Senate and House are both dubbed the “Maverick Act,” a clear reference to the Top Gun film franchise and the fictional Navy Capt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, played by star Tom Cruise.
Senator Tim Sheehy, a Montana Republican, introduced the Senate’s version of the Maverick Act on March 23. Senator Mark Kelly, an Arizona Democrat, co-sponsored that bill. Sheehy is a U.S. Naval Academy graduate and former Navy SEAL. Kelly is also a retired naval aviator, who flew A-6 Intruders, and astronaut. In the House, Representative Abe Hamadeh, a Republican from Arizona and U.S. Army veteran, introduced the companion legislation with the same title on April 16. There are nine co-sponsors to Hamadeh’s bill, including one Democrat. The legislation cleared the Senate by unanimous consent on April 28, and the matter is now in the hands of the House. The last Navy F-14 was officially retired in September 2006 after 32 years of service to the fleet. Despite its retirement in the United States, the Tomcat has remained under extremely tight export controls due to its continued service in Iran, the only other country to ever operate the type.
​

The three Tomcats now earmarked for potential transfer are identified by their Navy serial numbers, or Bureau Numbers: 164341, 164602, and 159437. These are the only three F-14Ds currently in storage at the famed boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona, per U.S. Air Force records. Three A variants and a pair of B models are also currently stored there. The current condition of any of these aircraft is unclear. Sticking with the text of the Senate version at the time of writing for simplicity, the bill says the transfer of the F-14s to the U.S. Space & Rocket Center, an air and space museum established by the government of Alabama in 1970, would be made at no cost to the government. “Any costs associated with such conveyance, costs of determining compliance with terms of the conveyance, and costs of operation and maintenance of the aircraft conveyed shall be borne by the Commission,” per the proposed legislation.
The bill explicitly states that the aircraft will “not have any capability for use as a platform for launching or releasing munitions or any other combat capability that it was designed to have.” It also lays out a series of conditions for the transfer, noting that the Secretary of the Navy would not be obligated to restore, repair, or otherwise modify the Tomcats before handing them over, but would provide accompanying maintenance and operations manuals along with any excess spare parts available. 
The matter of excess spare parts leads us to the most eye-catching section of the bill:
“The Secretary [of the Navy] shall provide excess spare parts to make one of the F-14D aircraft flyable or able to complete a static display, provided that any part transferred is from existing Navy stock, with no items being procured on behalf of the Commission.”
“The Secretary will not be responsible for transferring any additional parts or providing any additional support beyond what is stated in this section, during or after the conveyance of the aircraft,” the proposed legislation adds. As such, the Secretary of the Navy would allow the Commission to enter into agreements with relevant nonprofit organizations to help with restoring and operating the aircraft “for public display, airshows, and commemorative events to preserve naval aviation heritage.”

The transfer would also be made under the “condition that the Commission shall operate and maintain the aircraft in compliance with all applicable limitations and maintenance requirements imposed by the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration,” the bill notes. “The Commission shall not convey any ownership interest in, or transfer possession of, the aircraft to another party without the prior approval of the Secretary.”
The Navy would reserve the right to immediately repossess the aircraft if either of the above terms were breached.
“The Maverick Act of 2026 creates a narrow exception to the post-retirement restrictions that have destroyed nearly all F-14s, ensuring that its legacy is preserved,” according to a press release that Representative Hamadeh’s office put out on May 1. “The Maverick Act allows three of the world’s final Tomcats to be demilitarized and transferred for public display and education under strict national security safeguards. It does not restore combat capability or reopen foreign transfer.”
“I want to thank Senator Sheehy and his colleagues for passing this legislation aimed at preserving for history one of the most iconic aircraft ever flown,” Hamadeh said in an accompanying statement. “As a former U.S. Army officer, I know that many of the men and women I served with felt the same way. That is why I proudly introduced this legislation.”
It is worth noting that retired F-14s are on public display at various military bases and museums in the United States, but none are in flyable condition. Around its retirement, there had been unsuccessful pushes in the past to try to get a Tomcat back into the air in private hands, including by the late Dale “Snort” Snodgrass, a legendary naval aviator and F-14 pilot, who performed official Navy Tomcat demos at airshows for many years.
The prospect of getting a ‘warbird’ Tomcat flying has remained a persistent topic of popular discussion, but has long seemed largely impossible due to bureaucratic red tape, as well as the cost and complexity of doing so. TWZ stressed these points when it emerged that a non-flying F-14 would be featured in the sequel to 1986’s Top Gun and 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick. The U.S. military was heavily involved in the production of both movies. The original film cemented the place of the F-14 and the Navy’s TOPGUN program in popular culture.

Rolls-Royce has announced that its all-electric plane, dubbed the “Spirit of Innovation,” is the fastest of its kind in the world after it reached a maximum speed of 387.4 mph (623 k/h) in recent flight tests.
In a recent news release, the company, not to be mistaken for the car company owned by BMW, claimed that the Spirit of Innovation set three new world records earlier this week. On flight tests carried out on Nov. 16 by test pilot Nathan Finneman, Rolls-Royce said its aircraft reached a top speed of 345.4 mph (555.9 km/h) over 1.8 miles (3 kilometers), exceeding the current record by 132 mph (213 k/h). It broke another record in a subsequent 9.3-mile (15 kilometer) flight, during which it reached 330 mph (532.1 km/h), surpassing the current record by 182 mph (292.8 km/h).
The Spirit of Innovation didn’t stop there, though. Rolls-Royce affirms that it smashed another record when it reached 9,842.5 feet (3,000 meters) in 202 seconds, beating the current record by 60 seconds. In the company’s view, it also took the title of the world’s fastest all-electric vehicle when it reached a maximum speed of 387.4 mph (623 km/h) during its flight tests.
The company’s aircraft is powered by a 400kW electric powertrain and “the most power-dense propulsion battery pack ever assembled in aerospace.” It’s part of the Accelerating the Electrification of Flight project, which receives half of its funding from the UK government and the Aerospace Technology Institute.

Rolls-Royce said it’s submitting data on the plane’s achievements to the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, also known as the World Air Sports Federation, which is in charge of verifying world and continental records.
Company CEO Warren East celebrated the aircraft’s performance—which is quiet impressive considering that the Spirit of Innovation made its first flight ever a little more than a month ago—and said that technological breakthroughs like these are especially significant after the United Nation’s COP26 talks.
“Following the world’s focus on the need for action at COP26, this is another milestone that will help make ‘jet zero’ a reality and supports our ambitions to deliver the technology breakthroughs society needs to decarbonise transport across air, land and sea,” East said in the news release.
Considering the hundreds of private jets that descended upon COP26 in the ultimate showing of irony and hypocrisy, it’s clear the world has a private jet problem, which we all end up suffering for. If aircraft like the Spirit of Innovation prove viable, our planet will be better for it, especially if the technology can be adapted for larger commercial aircraft as well.