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Rookie Error: Forgetting to Bring Up the Landing Gear During Flight
This is a guest post by my friend Matthew Warburton, looking at the recent incident of Air India Flight AI676. I hope you enjoy it! Rookie errors can happen to any of us, no matter who we are or what we are doing. The difference is that any mistake can be very costly when you…
Read more… 7 Nov 17
More About Steve Fossett
Last week, we looked at the details of Steve Fossett’s disappearance and crash but there were some issues I just couldn’t fit in. This week, I want to look at some of the loose ends and questions … and also the questions brought up in the comments. Did hypoxia or some other impairment play a…
Read more… 3 Nov 17
Steve Fossett Disappearance
It was the 3rd of September in 2007 at around 09:30 local time in California when a Bellanca 8KCAB-180 (Super Decathlon) registration N240R disappeared in the ‘Nevada Triangle’. The 63-year-old pilot was Steve Fossett, a famous aviator and sailor. He is still the holder of multiple world records, including the fastest east-to-west transcontinental record for…
Read more… 27 Oct 17
How Much Runway is Too Much?
I have the flu and so I’ve decided that this week, you should write Fear of Landing’s Friday post for me. This video has caused a lot of discussion on aviation forums and I’d love to know what you think. The video is slow to start as it starts at the stand, so I’ve skipped…
Read more… 20 Oct 17
Cargo Fire at Hong Kong
On Monday, a cargo loader burst into flames while preparing to load American Airlines flight 192 from Hong Kong to Los Angeles. There’s a lot of embedded video on this post so if you are reading on the mailing list, you might want to click through to the post to view them. #hongKong #americanairlines Cargo…
Read more… 13 Oct 17
Hurricane Recovers Debris from Aircraft Lost in 1958
I have been working on a collection of aviation mysteries Without a Trace and so, of course, I was immediately interested when I saw that debris from a plane crash had been found sixty years after an aircraft had disappeared. Lieutenant William Thomas Barry Troy enlisted in the Royal Canada Navy in 1947, when he…
Read more… 6 Oct 17
Accident Analysis
Why KLM Cut the Steering Cables on Two Perfectly Functional Boeing 737s
Last month, we looked at the night of 28th of November 2004 at Barcelona Airport. KLM 1673 ran off the runway at high speed, stopping just short of a canal.…
KLM 1673 Veers Off the Runway with Full Right Rudder
On the 28th of November 2004, a Boeing B737 ran off the runway at Barcelona Airport. The weather had been good at Barcelona that evening. The flight crew agreed to land…
Demystifying
How Important is Having a Sterile Cockpit?
This question was posted to r/flying by a private pilot who wanted to know: do airline pilots ever engage in small talk about irrelevant things during taxiing, run-up, takeoff, and…
Someone has to write the TAF
It turns out that there a person sitting there deciding what the weather is going to do. Which seems obvious, except that I had somehow never asked msyelf who “someone”…
History
The CIA's Shark Screen
Today we have a guest post from the CIA! In their archives, researching something completely different, I found the answer to a question I never thought to ask. I immediately…
The First Jet to Land on an Aircraft Carrier (Deliberately)
“The Vampire was the first jet to land on a moving aircraft carrier deliberately.” This quote from Airshow Luke, our MC at the Legacy of Liberty airshow, made me almost…
Fun Stuff
Bird Strikes, Balloon Landings and Falling in Love with a Boeing 777
The exciting news on Fear of Landing this week was a huge scare about critical vulnerabilities in PHP. PHP is widely used on the web, including in WordPress, which is…
Petrified, Petrified, Petrified
There’s been some interesting reporting in the UK media about a “near disaster” over Canary Wharf involving the captain having to intervene (the horror!) after air data systems failed on…
