The Alistair Maclean novel Fear Is The Key begins with an aircraft being shot down by a war-surplus

Following all of the tropes applicable to pirates uk travel inn except for using aeroplanes (or better yet, airships , especially cool ones , or even better: flying boats! ) instead of boats, Sky Pirates (sometimes referred to as "Air Pirates") were fairly popular in the early days of aviation, though they were soon eclipsed by Space Pirates once aeroplanes became less novel. Nowadays, Sky Pirates are mostly found in the yellowing pages of 1920s and 1930s comics and pulp magazines , in modern media intended to evoke that era , and in Steampunk settings.
No Sky Pirate uk travel inn story is truly complete without at least one Airborne Aircraft Carrier . Huge zeppelins and giant flying boats are par for the course as well, as are other Magnificent Flying Machines . The punishment of walking the plank is especially deadly when it's administered by a sky pirate after a High Altitude Battle .
Cross Epoch , the official One Piece / Dragon Ball Z crossover one-shot manga, had several sky pirate factions. One led by Vegeta (along with Robin, Trunks, and Usopp), one led by Buggy and Emperor Pilaf (in a ship with an intimidating facade made out of papier mache ), and one led by Dr. Gero (only alluded to).
One Piece itself has a canon movie villain, "Gold Lion" Shiki, that definitely qualifies. Considering his Devil Fruit power essentially gives him near limitless telekinesis , he doesn't have so much a flying ship as a flying armada made of a flying uk travel inn archipelago.
The Golden uk travel inn Age Superman also tangled with sky pirates at least once, who used the surprisingly low key method of using fast armed airplanes to force lumbering airliners into landing in a convient field before robbing them on the ground.
Alexandre LeRoi appears as the main villain of the DC graphic novel Batman : Master of the Future , the sequel to Gotham By Gaslight , as an air pirate who intends to stop Gotham City's 20th Century celebrations, and to keep the looming century's polluting technology from becoming a reality. He keeps a mobile base in a zeppelin-esque airship powered by gas, and controlled by a robot LeRoi calls Antonio.
The Blackhawks sometimes faced Sky Pirates, and were treated as such themselves, at least early on. In their second story, an English pilot lashes out at Blackhawk: "Why, you're nothing but air pirates and assassins!"
Seems to be the direction Alex Ross and Dynamite Entertainment are taking the Black Terror within the Project uk travel inn Superpowers universe, complete with a parrot-themed sidekick. Must be that Jolly Roger on his chest...
Captain Shakespeare of Stardust is a more literal example, captaining a flying boat which is powered by lightning. (However, although they dress and act like pirates, they're never seen attacking other boats if there are any other flying boats and seem instead to be smugglers.)
Many 1930s pulps, Doc Savage and Operator 5 in particular. (Operator 5 was an early example of the James Bond -style super agent, complete with 1930s era high-tech gadgets.) Doc Savage twice faced Submarine Pirates as well.
Prominently featured in The Edge Chronicles - in six out of the ten books in the series, the protagonist is either a sky pirate, a former sky pirate, or a future sky pirate, and of the four short stories in the series, two of the protagonists are sky pirates.
The Syndicate of Pirates, who use flying machines (not yet invented at the time of writing) and secret uk travel inn rays to terrorise the adventurers uk travel inn of the Klondike Gold Rush at Alaska in George Griffith's The Great Pirate Syndicate (1899).
Captain Mors, the "Air Pirate", from Der Luftpirat und sein Lenkbares Luftschiff ( The Air Pirate and His Steerable Airship ); a German dime novel with 165 issues from 1908-1911. Captain Mors is mentioned (by never actual appears) in the League uk travel inn of Extraordinary Gentlemen comic.
Stephen Hunt 's The Court of the Air features uk travel inn airships as the main fighting force of one nation, the sole power with access to the Unobtainium necessary to keep them afloat. Better yet, the eponymous Court of the Air is a secret, ultra-elite, Badass organization of magic-wielding One-Man Army types. And their base is a floating fortress that is not only higher into the atmosphere than any airships other than their own can reach, but remains anchored there permanently .
Inevitably, sky pirates were among the foes fought by Biggles , though lacking the Airborne uk travel inn Aircraft Carriers or Cool Airships . The plots featuring them usually played out more like an armoured car heist, with either mechanical sabotage or some unemployed war veteran in a surplus fighter forcing an aircraft carrying bullion or other valuables to land, with a gang on the ground waiting uk travel inn to loot it. Gangs pulling off an Armed Blag on land and then using aircraft as getaway vehicles might also fall under this trope, however.
The Alistair Maclean novel Fear Is The Key begins with an aircraft being shot down by a war-surplus fighter plane, in order for The Mafia to get their hands on the precious cargo inside. uk travel inn Unfortunately the plane crashes in an unusually deep marine trench, setting off the events of the main story.
Mack Maloney's Wingman series, being a modern take on pulp fiction, features sky pirates in the Divided States of America . Since this setting doesn't involve the common conventions of Cool Airships or similar "flying towns" to attack, their activities mainly consist of forcing planes to land for robbery uk travel inn or engaging in air strikes on settlements.
The entire band embodies this trope, as their main theme involves them being a band of drunken rogue pirates operating off the airship Ophelia . Although, if the lyrics of Airship Pirates and Post-Apocalypse Punk are anything to go by, they're not particuarly good at it.
This image is further reinforced by the title track from their 2009 album AEther Shanties , which describes the ship as being about one good breeze from collapsing under its own weight, with a crew that's planning mutinies when they're not fighting uk travel inn each other.
Crimson Skies , later made into several video games. uk travel inn In an Alternate History setting where the United States of America broke up early in the 30's, with the interstate road and railroad network gone freight is instead delivered by air cargo services operating massive cargo zeppelins ; these are in turn preyed upon by air pirates.
Captain uk travel inn Gyrfalcon from Exalted , who mainly out of greed and an old grudge harasses uk travel inn the airships of the Haslanti League, who are the only significant power with a meaningful air force in the entire North. He dresses like a classic pirate, and sports a sidearm uk travel inn (which is actually a small flamethrower, not a gun, but whatever).
Skies of Arcadia . Strangely, they are still called uk travel inn Air Pirates despite uk travel inn the lack of any other kind of pirates or sea as such in a world with no oceans and floating continents. It also draws a distinct uk travel inn line between idealized pirates and real ones: Real pirates are called, appropriately, Black Pirates. Blue Rogues, on the other hand, are generally adventurers uk travel inn and explorers who only attack The Empire 's ships and Black Pirates.
Setzer in Final Fantasy VI . It's never explicitly stated, but he's a law-evading free spirit in an airship with a penchant for kidnapping beautiful women, whose "business" has taken a hit since the Empire started capturing more and more cities. All the trappings are there, anyway. uk travel inn He also happens to be the only man with an airship.
Final Fantasy XII , especially Revenant Wings , features them. Balthier and Fran start as them, and it's Vaan's dream to become one in the original game. It's also Balthier's class when he cameos in the rerelease of Final Fantasy Tactics , but Ramza laughs at him when he identifies himself as one, since airships are a thing of the past by that point.
Klonoa 2: Lunatea's Veil features a former trainee priestess turned sky pirate as the main antagonist. At one point, she turns into a giant robotic chicken, and you have to fight her. She comes with a Non-Human Sidekick in the form of Tat, a sort of cat creature with the skin tone of Lokai and Bele . (For non-Trekkies, that's black on one side and white on the other. Turns out Tat can split into black and white forms. )
The Flash MMOG Skyrates is set in a world recovering from an apocalyptic war which reduced the remaining viable landmass to a collection of scattered islands. Ripped from the ground and cast adrift in the sky through the use of Unobtainium , these Skylands carried with them the last remnants of civilization. Now split into several color-coded factions, the descendants of these survivors travel and trade between the Skylands and are preyed uk travel inn upon en route by air pirates operating from smaller, unmapped 'skylets'.
Freedom Wings takes place on an alternate Earth in an era resembling the 1940�s. Air Pirates have taken to the skies and have placed fear into the hearts of others world wide. The player assumes uk travel inn the role of a nameless, faceless pilot whose parents were murdered by air pirates, motivating the character to join the Air Patrol Association (APA), a squadron of mercenary pilots hired to clear the skies of Air Pirate activity.
Because Academagia takes place on a World in the Sky where the surface (and its oceans) are present but unreachable, they are usually referred to as simply "pirates". Like the legitimate sailors of Elumia, the pirates mostly use wind-powered flying ships that are either specifically enchanted or made with of a rare wood that "naturally" floats in the air . Although there are some mundane lighter-than-aircraft . Pirates are practically the default villain in this game, since they are the most prevalent antagonists in events and adventures, even eclipsing the local Thieves' Guild .
The setting of the Air Buccaneers mod for Unreal Tournament 2003 is heavily pirate-influenced. The weapons are blunderbusses and old-style-fuse cannons, the clothing is straight out of a pirate film and although the gameplay does not involve actual piracy in the strict sense of the word, the ta