Latest Posts  

Piper Malibu Loss of Control Over the Channel

New

On the 21st of January 2019, a Piper Malibu crashed into the English Channel near the island of Guernsey, killing both the pilot and the passenger on impact. Technically, this accident should have been investigated by the NTSB as the aircraft was registered in the US as N264DB. However, in this case, the NTSB delegated…

Read more… 26 Nov 21

Pushing Limits: The Fatal Crash of a Newly Qualified Pilot

On the 11th of October 2020, a Cessna FRA150L Aerobat departing from a grass field in the Lake District crashed shortly after take-off. The pilot was killed in the impact. Yesterday, the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) released the results of their investigation. This accident is tragic, in that it is a story of…

Read more… 19 Nov 21

Funniest Thing You’ve Heard On the Radio

I’ve been struggling this week and was just panicking that I would not have a post finished in time for you for today when I discovered that Reddit had saved the day. Juicybradpit posted to r/flying to ask: What is the funniest thing you’ve heard on the radio? The answers are fantastic! Here are my…

Read more… 12 Nov 21

Wings for Wildlife: Aviation at Sheldrick Wildlife Trust

The Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, founded in 1977, is a charity focused on the conservation, preservation and protection of wildlife and habitats in Kenya. Their well-written newsletters are always a joy to receive, with news and stories from the trust and if you adopt an orphan elephant, rhino and giraffe, you receive additional content including a…

Read more… 5 Nov 21

HAV Airlander 10 incident in 2016

On the 24th of August 2016, a test flight of the HAV Airlander 10 registered G-PHRG ended badly. Well, the test flight itself was successful. With aircraft, take-off and landing are the critical phases of flight, while most airship issues seem to occur after the flight is finished, when the airship is parking. Or rather,…

Read more… 29 Oct 21

There Will Be No Accident Left Behind

I have long lists of accidents that I’d like to know more about and I keep adding new ones, even though there are already more in my files than I could cover in a dozen lifetimes. The problem is that I really hate deleting anything. I’ve tried to do a clear out with the result…

Read more… 22 Oct 21

Accident Reports

Lion Air flight 610: The Final Minutes

Last week, we started the sequence of events that happened inside the cockpit of Lion Air flight 610. The primary resource for this sequence of events is the final report…

Lion Air flight 610: In the Cockpit

On the 29th of October 2018, Lion Air flight 610, a Boeing 737-8 (MAX) crashed at Tanjung Karawang, West Java after departing from Jakarta. This crash was the first public…

Demystifying

Maintaining Focus in the Cockpit

This article by Key Dismukes, Grant Young and Robert Sumwait is based on their research at NASA to study the problem of crew preoccupation. They reviewed NTSB reports of accidents…

Maintaining the Stores

We don’t often talk about parked aircraft because it is not very common for them to be involved in crashes. However, one of the side-effects of these pandemic times is…

History

The Mount Erebus Disaster

On the 28th of November 1979, a sight-seeing flight to Antartica crashed into Mount Erebus, killing all 257 on board. The Mount Erebus Disaster, as it came to be known,…

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,…

Fun Stuff

A Little Bit of Everything

There’s so much great aviation writing and video out there and I’m always appreciative when people send me fun things; it seems a shame not to share them! So here’s…

The Tetris Challenge

When the Kantonspolizei Zürich (the police department of the Swiss canton of Zurich) posted a photograph on Facebook showing the contents of a standard patrol car, they had no idea…