::Yes, aeroplane is totally the "standard" English word every where but in the U.S. and (perhaps?) Canada. As is "aerodynamics", "aerodyne", "aerostat" and many other words which it were tedious to rehearse (hem hem). Even in Australia, where we're much more tolerant of Americanisms than in the "old sod", "airplane" is almost comically illiterate. In fact I suspect there are some people wouldn't even identify it "up front" as an Americanism at all - and just look on it as a childish misspelling - the way a three or four year old would say it. Hence all the trouble they've been having over the "Airplane" article - it had the title "Fixed wing aircraft" or something like that for a long time. I must admit I thought for years that "airplane" was in the same category as "sox" (for "socks") - a kind of "joke" spelling than even the septic tanks didn't take seriously. Oh dear... Anyway, since the word "aircraft" is "trans Atlantic" - and in most contexts means the same thing we can usually get away with that, which is what I did here, of course. Libby himself, interestingly, uses "plane" and "ship" in the passages we quote in the article - neither of which would be MOS except in a direct quote, but not "airplane". I might re-read my copy of "horses" to check if he uses it there at all. Funnily enough, "aeroplane" was standard American when the word in Britain was "flying machine" (usually abbreviated to "machine"). Perhaps we'll adopt "airplane' some time down the track to find that you people are calling them "wooshbangs" or something.  

 More to the point - glad you didn't notice anything drastically wrong with the article.