This week, a 25-year old pilot was fined £3,400 for airspace infringement. The case was somewhat dramatically reported on in the Herts and Essex observer: Pilot fined after causing havoc over Stansted airport | Uttlesford village headlines The Court Reporter has written up the case, including the claim that, “At one point, Marriott’s poorly-equipped Piper…
Read more… 26 Apr 13
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has announced that a pilot sending and receiving text messages was a self-induced distraction and considered a contributing factor in the crash. From the accident report: On August 26, 2011, at 1841 central daylight time (all times cdt), a Eurocopter AS-350-B2 helicopter, N352LN, sustained substantial damage when it impacted…
Read more… 12 Apr 13
The AAIB has released a special bulletin regarding their field investigation of the helicopter which crashed into a crane at St George Wharf, Vauxhall, London on the 16th of January. The accident killed the pilot and a pedestrian. Additional people on the ground suffered serious injuries. The special bulletin does not include any analysis. They’ve…
Read more… 1 Mar 13
Crossair Flight 3597 was an AVRO 146-RJ100, a regional airliner manufactured in the UK by British Aerospace. This aircraft type is popular at small, city-based airports because it is very quiet. Flight 3597 was a scheduled flight from Berlin-Tegel in Germany to Zurich in Switzerland. On the 24th of November in 2001, 28 passengers, 3…
Read more… 22 Feb 13
Forty years ago on the 29th of December in 1972, Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 crashed into the Florida Everglades. It was an uneventful flight from JFK until shortly before they were at the approach at Miami Airport. When the flight-crew lowered the landing gear, they did not receive confirmation that the nose wheel was…
Read more… 4 Jan 13
The two pilots were co-owners of VH-CNZ. She was a commercial pilot with over 10,000 hours, 600 of them on type. One blog post at the time said that she was a flight instructor. He was a private pilot with just over 2,500 hours and 120 on type. VH-CNZ was a Piper Twin Comanche which…
Read more… 16 Nov 12
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…
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…
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…
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…
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.…
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…
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…