– Page 91
The Mystery of the Hawaii Clipper
Pan American Airways was founded in 1927 to offer air mail services as a response to German-owned Colombian carrier SCADTA who was moving north from Colombia and lobbying hard for landing rights in the Panama Canal Zone. The US government approved Pan Am’s mail delivery contract and protected it from US competitors, glad that SCADTA…
Read more… 26 Feb 16
The Stolen Boeing
It shouldn’t be so easy to lose an aircraft. Especially a big old airliner. It was 47 metres (153 feet) long and 10 metres (34 feet) high, with a wingspan of 33 metres (108 feet). Twice the height of a giraffe and four times the length of a London bus. The aircraft was a Boeing…
Read more… 19 Feb 16
Merde Merde Merde: Crash Landing in French Field
This video appeared on YouTube last week and shows a cockpit point-of-view of a small aircraft taking off from a grass strip when suddenly the engine fails. Apparently, the pilot was completely unharmed, which surprised me. An anonymous commenter on an aviation forum said that the pilot spent ten years building the plane, a two-seater…
Read more… 12 Feb 16
How to Drop a Gulfstream IV into a Ravine: Habitual Noncompliance
Everyone involved with aviation knows checklists. They are the cornerstone of aviation safety, meant to protect against the ever increasing complexity of aircraft and the limited attention span of the average human. They follow a pattern: a B-32 checklist from 1943 is similar in concept and design to a modern airliner checklist. It would be…
Read more… 5 Feb 16
The Navigator
I’m thrilled to be able to bring you a special post today. Captain Richard Otis sent this to me after I begged him to write down one of his many, many great stories so that I could share them with you. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have. Captain Richard A. Otis,…
Read more… 29 Jan 16
The Latest Embarrassing Attempt to Prove MH370’s Pilot Hijack
There’s been a lot of excitement around Byron Bailey’s article, The case for pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah’s hijack of flight MH370. Once again, an apparent expert attempts to solve the mystery of Malaysia Airlines flight 370, this time by making it clear that Zaharie Ahmad Shah, the captain of the aircraft, must have hijacked the…
Read more… 22 Jan 16
Accident Analysis
Fatal SR22 Stall on Final at Barwick LaFayette
On the 20th of March, 2025, a Cirrus SR22 crashed in LaFayette, Georgia during an instructional flight, killing both the pilot and the flight instructor. It was a good flying…
There Is a Parachutist in Front of You
On the 15th of June 2023, a light aircraft crashed into the runway at Aversi private airfield in Denmark. The aircraft, registered in Germany as D-EPRR, was a Cessna TU206G…
Demystifying
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”…
The Pilots, the Probes, and the AF447 Verdict
On the 21st of May 2026, the Paris Court of Appeal convicted Airbus and Air France of involuntary manslaughter for their roles in the crash of Air France flight 447,…
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
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…
Aviation Stories You Might Have Missed
I hope you all are having a wonderful holiday season. This week, I’ve put together a compilation of interesting items in the press that you might have missed while enjoying…
