Latest Posts   –  Page 32

An Icon of Aviation

I have a guest post this week by Nicholas Brown, the Campus President of Spartan College of Aeronautics and Technology. The college has been rebuilding a replica of Little Stinker, the Pitts Special flown by Betty Skelton. I’ll let Nicholas tell you all about it but first I wanted to share this video from an…

Read more… 25 Jun 21

BA Boeing 787-8 nosewheel collapse at Heathrow

Early this morning at Heathrow Airport, a British Airways aircraft was reported to have suffered a nose wheel collapse. Aviation Geek and Plane Spotter M Zulqarnain B quickly posted photographs of the incident. It doesn’t look good. The aircraft, a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner registered G-ZBJB converted from a passenger aircraft to cargo transport, flew into…

Read more… 18 Jun 21

ATC behind the scenes: VFR into IMC

One of the biggest safety hazards in general aviation is pilots inadvertently flying into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) and losing visibility in the cloud. A private pilot who has not undergone special training for using instruments flies VFR (Visual Flight Rules), looking outside the aircraft. If the aircraft flies into cloud, the pilot loses visual…

Read more… 11 Jun 21

Fatal Seaplane Crash at Oshkosh

The flight crew is often the last safety net when things go wrong, making their failures an easy target for us to point at. After all, if the pilot can be retrained or is no longer flying, then we can consider the problem solved. This allows training deficiencies, operational issues and poor maintenance to be…

Read more… 4 Jun 21

Belarus Airspace Incident

On the 23rd of May 2021, Ryanair Sun flight FR-4978 departed Athens, Greece for a scheduled passenger flight to Vilnius, Lithuania with 126 passengers and six crew on board. The aircraft was a Boeing 737-800, registered in Poland as SP-4SM. While crossing Belarus airspace en-route to Lithuania, shortly before its arrival, the northbound aircraft squawked…

Read more… 28 May 21

The Last Known Whereabouts of the White Bird

The disappearance of L’Oiseau Blanc in 1927 is one of the enduring mysteries of aviation history. The pilots eventually achieved their goal of changing aviation history, but certainly not in the way that they had hoped. It has only just come to my attention that I haven’t written about this mystery here, so I hope…

Read more… 21 May 21

Accident Reports

Wings Over Dallas: How Poor Systems Led to Mid-Air Collision

On the 12th of November 2022, a Bell P-63F Kingcobra fighter flew into a Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress bomber during the Wings Over Dallas airshow. All six crew members in…

"Totally a visibility issue."

On Sunday, the 27th of November 2022, a single-engine aircraft made national US news when it crashed through power lines in Gaithersburg, Maryland, coming to rest on a lattice tower.…

Demystifying

How to tell an F-16 Fighting Falcon from a Eurofighter Typhoon

There are a number of reasons why you might need to quickly point out the differences between a General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon and a Eurofighter EF2000 Typhoon. You might…

Extreme Turbulence in Singapore Airlines flight 321

A few days ago (21st of May 2024), Singapore Airlines flight SQ321 encountered heavy turbulence on a passenger flight from London-Heathrow to Singapore. There were 229 on board, including eighteen…

History

Gladys Ingle Inflight Wheel Change: Emergency Action or Stunt?

This video of a mid-air wheel exchange goes viral once a year or so, but I never get tired of watching it. Last week, it showed up on Reddit and…

The Disappearance of the Hawaii Clipper May Not Be as Mysterious as Was Thought

This week, we have a guest post by J.B. Rivard who wrote an article for the American Aviation Historical Society (AAHS) and used one of my articles as a reference.…

Fun Stuff

Terminally Early: The Berlin Viewing Platform

Mistakes were made. All of them were mine. Before I left for Dresden, I planned out my full itinerary. Berlin is a much busier airport than Tallinn, so I needed…

A Few Good Stories

I’m in Dresden at the moment and I’m afraid I haven’t had a free moment to write you a new article. Luckily, lots of other people are on the internet…