How to do this dictation: listen to the audio and write down the missing words. You can replay it as many times as you need. When you have finished, check your answers against the answer key.
Continue reading Listening: Lightning Strike on Departure from Amsterdam
Some verbs are always followed by to + the base form of another verb. We call this the verb + infinitive pattern. It appears constantly in aviation news when reporters describe plans, decisions, and goals.
The most common verbs in this pattern are: want, plan, decide, need, hope, expect, agree, and choose.
Continue reading Structure: ‘Verb + infinitive’
Saudi Arabia has a new airline. It is called Riyadh Air. On 10 June 2026, it flew its first passengers from Riyadh to London.
Continue reading Riyadh Air Flies Its First Passengers to London
Aircraft: Airbus A320
Callsign: Easy 23
Route: Amsterdam Schiphol (EHAM) to Manchester (EGCC)
Current state: You are descending through 8,000 feet on the arrival into Manchester when the green hydraulic system fails. The ECAM shows a loss of normal landing gear extension, normal brakes and nose wheel steering. The Captain is working the ECAM and QRH. You are on Manchester Approach.
Souls on board: 156
Endurance: 1 hour 10 minutes remaining
Your role: First Officer, working the radio (Pilot Monitoring)
On 15 June 1919, two exhausted British airmen climbed out of a wrecked biplane half-buried in a bog in County Galway — and into history. The day before, John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown had taken off from Newfoundland to attempt something no one had ever done: fly across the Atlantic Ocean without stopping. Our series Defining Moments in Aviation begins, fittingly for an Irish school, with a landing in Ireland.
Continue reading Aviation History: The First Non-Stop Flight Across the AtlanticA cleft sentence takes a single idea and splits it into two clauses so that one element is thrown into sharp focus. (Cleft simply means “divided.”) Compare the flat statement The redesigned fuel system makes the route possible with the version a journalist might actually write: It is the redesigned fuel system that makes the route possible. The facts are identical; the second sentence just decides what you notice first.
Continue reading Structure: ‘Cleft sentences’