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Rare Airplanes in Flight

Gemini Sparkle

Key Takeaways:

  • Only a small percentage of the thousands of aircraft types ever built survive today, making flying examples exceptionally rare and reliant on dedicated restoration efforts by individuals and institutions.
  • The article showcases diverse rare aircraft, including the unique wooden de Havilland Mosquito (currently the only one flying) and the futuristic, carbon-fiber Beech 2000A Starship, largely destroyed by its manufacturer.
  • It also highlights iconic historical survivors like the pioneering 1909 Bleriot XI (the second-oldest flyable aircraft), the sole flying B-29 Superfortress "Fifi," and a Mitsubishi Zero with its original Japanese engine.
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de Havilland Mosquito photos by Scott Slocum|

When I first came across Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft as a new associate editor at Flying magazine in the mid-1990s, I was already a longtime aviation-history enthusiast — an incurable condition I inherited from my father. Jane’s, as I hope you know, is the record of aircraft development. Most years since 1909, Jane’s, founded by Fred Jane, has published a volume that audaciously proposes to do just what the name of the tome promises: document every production airplane in the world (along with a good number of kits and projects and, frankly, wild dreams).

FLYING Staff

FLYING Magazine is a one-stop resource for everything aviation, including news, training, aircraft, gear, careers, photos, videos, and more.

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