For nervous travelers, an aircraft's landing marks one of the flight's most harrowing moments. For the pilot and crew, it marks the completion of yet another successful journey 30,000 feet in the air.

It isn't an easy feat designing a safe commercial airliner that can weigh almost 153,000 pounds to land on a runway without damaging itself. Planes are also allowed to be heavier at takeoff than their ...

With rising aviation fuel costs and an increased global focus on the sustainability and environmental impact of the aviation industry, purposefully dumping fuel from an aircraft can seem like an ...