Category: Accident Reports –  Page 26

Fatal Accident in Oban: Just a Quick Flight to Look at the Weather

John Smith regularly took flying holidays with his family. His youngest daughter, Jacqueline, followed in his footsteps, getting her PPL once she turned 18. The father and daughter were in a syndicate of five people who owned a Piper Cherokee Arrow (PA-28R-201T) and the logs show that they took the plane most Easter weekends, booking…

Read more… 18 Nov 11

The B25 Bomber and the Empire State Building

On the 28th of July in 1945 a B25 crashed into the Empire State Building. The photographs look like something out of an old King Kong movie, with flames licking up the building. But the fire was extinguished within 40 minutes, still the only fire at such a height that was ever successfully controlled. And…

Read more… 28 Oct 11

PULL UP PULL UP: Garuda Indonesia flight GA200 in Yogyakarta

I’ve been reading an old accident investigation report from the National Transportation Safety Committee in Indonesia. You may recall the frightening photographs that hit the press in March 2007, when this Boeing 737 overran the runway at Yogyakarta and was destroyed from the impact and resulting fire. One flight attendant and twenty passengers were killed…

Read more… 30 Sep 11

We’ve Lost the Cabin: Southwest Flight 812

On the 1st of April this year, Southwest Airlines flight 812 departed from Phoenix for Sacramento. There were five crew and 118 passengers on board. At 34,000 feet, climbing through to FL360, there was a loud sharp noise. The cabin experienced rapid decompression and the oxygen masks deployed. Shawna Malvini Redden, a passenger on the…

Read more… 8 Jul 11

15 Years since ValuJet Flight 592

It’s been 15 years since the famous ValuJet crashed into the Everglades, a tragic accident that did much to focus our views on cost-savings and in-flight safety. There’s been a lot of discussion of the flight, including a National Geographic Seconds From Disaster episode. On the 11th of May in 1996, ValuJet Flight 592 disappeared.…

Read more… 13 May 11

Unfit to Fly

I read a lot of accident reports – most pilots do – in the hopes of learning more about flight and human factors and just maybe how to avoid ending up a statistic. But there are some accidents that are simply sad, with no lesson to be learnt nor explanations that can help us to…

Read more… 18 Feb 11

Accident Reports

Bird Opens Cargo Door on A320

On the 20th of June in 2011, an Airbus A320-212, registration CS-TKJ, taxied to runway 05 at Aeroporto de Madeira for a scheduled morning flight from Funchal to Copenhagen with…

Alitalia flight 404: The result of a dozen small decisions

Last week, we looked at the key events that led to the Alitalia flight 404 crash. A few points from the previous post: Maintenance replaced both radio receivers in the…

Demystifying

I am a teapot

A reader contacted me to ask about a missing flight 404; they had heard on a trivia podcast that the original computer error message 404 was based on two flights…

The Legend of the Ghost of Kyiv

On the 25th of February 2022, Plane & Pilot magazine shared a video of the “Ghost of Kyiv” overflying Kyiv in a Ukrainian MiG-29. An unnamed Ukrainian fighter pilot shot…

History

Avro York Runway Excursion at Stansted

While researching another subject, I discovered this accident report from 1956 which I just had to share with you. Normally, an aviation accident investigation is done by a group of…

Amazing Aerial View of Edinburgh

When I first saw this image, I assumed it was result of modern image manipulations, maybe even the poster for a film. It was too perfect and too modern to…

Fun Stuff

Funniest Thing You've Heard On the Radio

I’ve been struggling this week and was just panicking that I would not have a post finished in time for you for today when I discovered that Reddit had saved…

A Little Bit of Everything

There’s so much great aviation writing and video out there and I’m always appreciative when people send me fun things; it seems a shame not to share them! So here’s…