The strangest Boeing 747 modifications that never flew
The size and success of Boeing’s iconic 747 aircraft made it the perfect platform for a number of…
Unrealized projects
26 articles
Topics related to aviation projects that were proposed or in development but never completed or realized.
How Airbus tried to use this fighter jet for space tourism | Video
Space tourism sounds exciting, but it is wildly expensive. In the early 2000s, Airbus had an idea to…
Is it real? Meet MF-212, an odd modern Hungarian-Belarusian prop fighter
The history of aviation is full of projects that lead to the question: what were they thinking? Such projects might…
Whatever happened to NASA’s ambitious space-based solar factory from the 1970s?
During the Cold War there was no shortage of projects that could have come straight from the pages…
Where are our jetpacks?
For more than a century now the jetpack has been a staple of science fiction.From 1930s comics and…
Top 10 largest passenger aircraft that never flew
As airlines retire their legendary Boeing 747s, and the production of Airbus A380 – the largest passenger airplane…
Baby Sukhoi: how Russia came up with the world’s smallest fighter jet
Many people get shocked upon realizing how big modern fighter jets actually are. The length of the Sukhoi…
Flying wings: why everybody still talks about them | Part 1
In September 2020, Airbus presented their project ZEROe – three hydrogen-powered concept aircraft. A small conventional jet, a…
Flying wings: why they never succeeded, and probably never will | Part 2
The Golden Age of flying wingsThe end of the Golden Age is much easier to pinpoint than the…
MAKS: the space plane An-225 Mriya was supposed to launch
Everybody knows and loves the Antonov An-225 Mriya, the world’s heaviest and arguably largest aircraft. Many know about…
Myasishchev M-25: Soviet plane that would kill with sound
Most combat aircraft fall into one of several conventional categories: fighter, bomber, ground attack airplane. The M-25, or…
The long death of Frigate Ecojet, Russia’s revolutionary wide-body
Frigate Ecojet was a Russian project of a wide-body, four-aisle airliner with an oval fuselage cross-section. The team…
Would the Russian flying saucer actually work? | EKIP Part 4
Through the 80s and 90s, Lev Nikolayevich Schukin and his team of engineers tried to develop and sell an…
Secret story of EKIP, the Soviet flying saucer | Part 1
At one point in history there was an aircraft that could take off and land without an airport,…
How Russians tried to sell a flying saucer | EKIP Part 2
In the late 70s Soviet engineer Lev Nikolayevich Schukin came up with an idea for an aircraft of…
What is left of the Russian flying saucer? | EKIP Part 3
EKIP was a project to develop an aircraft with some wondrous properties: a saucer-like flying wing that would…
From MiG-19 with lift fans to J-18: China’s VTOL fighter jet problem
China’s ambition to become a global power rests on rivaling the United States – as well as the…
Spaceport, airliner, Putin’s plane: past ideas for second An-225 Mriya
The An-225 Mriya is unique in many aspects: it is the heaviest and arguably the largest operating aircraft…