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. This accident highlighted the importance of the pitot-static system and the effects of spatial disorientation in a way that is hard to over-emphasise. With the…
Read more… 9 Nov 18
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 the pilots for not following procedure and then, when it went wrong, making bad decisions. I needed to split the posts in order to have…
Read more… 5 Oct 18
On the 3rd of March 2023, a passenger in a private jet died after severe injuries in the cabin, which were originally reported as caused by severe turbulence. This was…
On the 19th of January 2025, a Robinson R44 Raven II helicopter registered as ZS-RJC departed Chief Dawid Stuurman Aerodrome (formerly Port Elizabeth Airport) in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province.…
This is not an article that I ever thought I would feel compelled to write! However, given the confusion over a photograph chosen in a regional English paper, apparently it’s…
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…
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…
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.…
It seems a good time for something a bit more lighthearted. After weeks of analyzing serious incidents and technical failures, I thought I could a moment to appreciate aviation humuor…
I’m going to admit that I’m not a great fan of April Fools’ pranks, especially not attempts to trick people into believing something and then pulling the rug out from…