Last week we looked at a general aviation crash in which the pilot reported a Mayday as a result of an engine failure. Eight minutes later, the pilot crashed into a forest near Colbert, Oklahoma. Today, I want to focus on what happened with the air traffic control centre who advised the pilot. The pilot…
Read more… 15 Feb 19
On the 26th of July a single-engine light aircraft crashed in the woods near Colbert, Oklahoma while attempting a forced landing. The pilot had reported his emergency ten minutes earlier and had the full support of ATC. The crash took place at mid-afternoon; it was a clear day and visibility was good. There was a…
Read more… 8 Feb 19
On the 22nd of December 2017, BMI Regional flight 1822, an Embraer ERJ-145EP (G-CKAG), was a scheduled flight from Frankfurt/Main in Germany to Bristol Airport in England. There were 22 passengers and three crew on board. As the aircraft came in to land on Runway 27, it skidded off the runway and came to a…
Read more… 18 Jan 19
I try to make these posts as stand-alone as possible but this time I just couldn’t do it. In order to make sense of this post, you need to read Part One of the Christmas Miracle here. So when we left off, the aircraft had been in the air for under a minute and the…
Read more… 4 Jan 19
I am not a fan of “miracles” which dismiss the safety culture, training and skill that airline crew bring to a situation; however, in the case of the Miraklet i Gottröra, it has to be said that pilot skill was supported by a large helping of good fortune which led to this amazing happy-ending crash…
Read more… 28 Dec 18
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. On Wednesday, the KNKT (the Indonesian transport authority) released a preliminary report, based on their findings so far. In order to understand this accident, we need to start with the flight…
Read more… 30 Nov 18
On the 2nd of October in 1996, Aeroperú 603 made history with a frantic and heartbreaking 25-minute flight that ended with the loss of the aircraft and all on board.…
Last week, I went through the details of the fatal runway overrun of East Coast Jets flight 81). This is one of those accidents where it seems easy to blame…
Thirty years ago, on the 26th of June 1988, a brand new Airbus A320 crashed during a demonstration of its fly-by-wire capabilities, killing three passengers and demolishing the plane as…
When I’m not obsessing about aviation, I write speculative fiction, including science fiction featuring near-future technology. So you can imagine I was pretty excited when I saw a headline last…
I’m in Austria this week, giving a presentation about the representation of old women in science fiction. So it seemed only right to celebrate a woman in aviation who might…
I’ve been working hard on volume two of Without a Trace and, of course, I can’t resist a chapter on Dan Cooper, who successfully hijacked a Northwest Orient aircraft and…
I was browsing around looking for interesting news when I saw that Reddit user justachamelion had posted a great question for /r/AskReddit: Pilots of Reddit, what are the weirdest or…
There are lots of private jets up for sale but this one is special… It is a 1962 Lockheed JetStar 1329. The JetStar was a private project at Lockheed, originally…