June 30 
The solo circumnavigation of the Globe by Steve Fossett in a hot-air balloon is almost a reality with 75^% of the trip completed to-date

  "Everything is going according to plan"

Steve will be the latest "earthrounder" member and follows local Archerfield based aviator Bill Finlen's solo circumnavigation in his single engine V35 Bonanza - those details are HERE

 June 26 
A person smoking in the toilet of UK's budget carrier easyJet caused a full scale emergency at Newcastle airport in the UK when the aircraft reported that there was a fire

"...the Boeing 737 carrying 134 passengers was on a flight from Glasgow, Scotland to Amsterdam in the Netherlands when the blaze was discovered"

There were no injuries; the fate of the "smoking" passenger is not recorded

 June 28 
A Greek F-4 Phantom has crashed into Mount Derfi on the island of Evvoia in the Mediterranean Sea

  "The aircraft was on a training flight and in thick cloud when it crashed"

The pilot and systems warfare officer on board the ageing jet fighter were killed on impact

The Greek Air Force link is HERE

 June 27 
OZ's F-111 fleet has been grounded again after one of the refurbished aircraft ran into problems during a training flight near Darwin

  "..F-111 aircraft were grounded earlier this year because of a major wing fault... it's not known if this incident is related to wings"

15 of the fighter/bombers from the Amberley RAAF military air base had resumed flying after refurbishing with a shorter second hand wing designed to prolong service life

Previous Report HERE

 June 27 
The OZ Government has committed $300m to participate in the system development and demonstration phase of the Lockheed Martin Joint Strike Fighter program

The JSF will be produced in three variants; conventional, carrier and vertical STOL

OZ joins in with other countries, UK, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and Japan, in sharing the development costs of the USA's X-35 fighter

 June 26 
Japan's National Aeronautics Laboratory plan to test in OZ a 'model' prototype passenger aircraft designed to fly at twice the speed of sound

On July 11, at Woomera in South OZ, a 10 per cent scale model of the real thing is to ride piggy-back on a rocket up to the target speed of 2800 kmh in a 14-minute test flight

The design calls for a 300 passenger configuration and to operate at Concorde Mach 2+ speeds