Category: Accident Reports –  Page 22

Dissection of a Hard Landing at London City

It was the morning of the 18th of August 2007 in London. The aircraft was HB-IYU, an Avro RJ100, the improved version of the British Aerospace 146 short-haul airliner, with four turbofan engines and a retractable tricycle landing gear (the most common landing gear for modern aircraft). The captain had over 9,000 flying hours, of…

Read more… 11 Mar 16

“Um, have you landed?” Southwest 4013

Flight SWA4013 was a Southwest Airlines scheduled passenger service from Chicago, Illinois to Branson, Missouri. The incident occurred on the 14th of January, 2014. The aircraft was a Boeing 737-7H4 registration N272WN. In the cockpit was the captain, who was Pilot Monitoring, the first officer, who was Pilot Flying, a company dispatcher who observed from…

Read more… 4 Mar 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

Engineer Sucked into Jet Engine

In an awful piece of news from Mumbai, it seems that an Air India technician died at Mumbai airport after he was sucked into an aircraft engine as the flight crew began to taxi. The current reports are all expectedly sensationalistic and it will take a while before an investigation can explain how the technician…

Read more… 18 Dec 15

The High Altitude Stall of AirAsia QZ8501

On the 28th of December 2014, Indonesia Air Asia flight QZ8501 disappeared mid-flight on a routine journey from Surabaya, Indonesia to Singapore. On the 1st of December 2015, the Komite Nasional Keselamatan Transportasi (KNKT), the Indonesian ministry in charge of aviation investigations in Indonesia, released a report of over 200 pages regarding the accident. The…

Read more… 11 Dec 15

Which Way is Up? John F Kennedy Jr plane crash

John F. Kennedy Jr. died on the 16th of July 1999, when his aircraft crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. He was piloting the airplane; his wife and her sister were in the back. This 16-year-old accident came up in the comments recently (and if you aren’t reading the…

Read more… 20 Nov 15

Accident Reports

Overrun in Ireland

On the 19th of February 2023, a private pilot arranged to meet with a flight instructor at Birr Airfield to fly a Cessna 172 Skyhawk. That morning, the flight instructor…

Icing, Systems, and Human Factors: Preliminary Findings on Voepass flight 2283

On the 9th of August 2024 at 16:22, Voepass flight 2283, a scheduled flight from Cascavel, Paraná, to Guarulhos, São Paulo entered a flat spin and crashed into a residential…

Demystifying

How to tell an F-16 Fighting Falcon from a Eurofighter Typhoon

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…

Extreme Turbulence in Singapore Airlines flight 321

A few days ago (21st of May 2024), Singapore Airlines flight SQ321 encountered heavy turbulence on a passenger flight from London-Heathrow to Singapore. There were 229 on board, including eighteen…

History

Gladys Ingle Inflight Wheel Change: Emergency Action or Stunt?

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…

The Disappearance of the Hawaii Clipper May Not Be as Mysterious as Was Thought

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.…

Fun Stuff

Terminally Early: The Berlin Viewing Platform

Mistakes were made. All of them were mine. Before I left for Dresden, I planned out my full itinerary. Berlin is a much busier airport than Tallinn, so I needed…

A Few Good Stories

I’m in Dresden at the moment and I’m afraid I haven’t had a free moment to write you a new article. Luckily, lots of other people are on the internet…