Airportness takes the reader on a single day's journey through all the routines and stages of an ordinary flight. From curbside to baggage, and pondering the minutes and hours of sitting in between, Christopher Schaberg contemplates the mundane world of commercial aviation to discover "the nature of flight." For Schaberg this means hearing planes in the sky, recognizing airline symbols in unlikely places, and navigating the various zones of transit from sliding doors, to jet bridge, to lavatory. It is an ongoing, swarming ecosystem that unfolds each day as we fly, get stranded, and arrive at our destinations. Airportness turns out to be more than just architecture and design elements-rather, it is all the rumble and buzz of flight, the tedium of travel as well as the feelings of uplift.

This is the first book ever to chronicle in detail all of the Mirage III, 5, F1 and 2000 aircraft and specifically their use in combat operations from the Middle East to the South Atlantic, the Persian Gulf to the steaming jungles of Ecuador and Peru. With well over three million flight hours since 1961, the Mirage has seen more combat than any present day jet fighter, including action in the Six-Days War, the Falklands, the Gulf War and many other lesser known conflicts. Superb color photography is combined with detailed text including squadron histories, and Mirage pilot narratives from Israel, Argentina, South Africa,Iraq and others.

A successful example of European co-operation, the Tornado multi-role strike aircraft was designed to meet a 1968 specification for a two-seat Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MRCA) and developed by the international Panavia Aircraft consortium owned jointly by British Aerospace, Germany’s MBB and Italy’s Aeritalia. First flown in August 1974, the twin-turbojet powered two-seat aircraft with a variable geometry wing, entered service with the Royal Air Force, the German Luftwaffe and Marineflieger and the Italian Aeronautica Militare Italiana in the 1980s at the height of the Cold War. The RAF Tornado GRs achieved 38 years of unbroken service deployed on various conflicts with NATO allies including operations in the Gulf, Afghanistan, the Balkans, Libya and Syria before being withdrawn from service in 2019. German and Italian Tornados continue anti-ISIL operations over Syria and Iraq. A total of 940 Tornados were produced including 96 for Saudi Arabia and Air Defence Variants, plus nine prototypes and six pre-production aircraft. More than 200 remain in service in 2020. Written by aviation expert David Oliver, this well-informed and readable book, accompanied by 200 illustrations, covers the Tornado’s development, production, service in the RAF, German, Italian and Saudi Arabian Air forces as well as operations in the Gulf, Afghanistan, the Balkans, Libya, Syria and Yemen.