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 31st of July in 2008, East Coast Jets flight 81 departed Atlantic City International Airport carrying two pilots and six passengers for a non-scheduled domestic passenger flight to Owatonna Degner Regional Airport in Owatonna, Minnesota. Two and a half hours later, they were dead. This crash is interesting to me because at first…
Read more… 28 Sep 18
On Sunday, the 27th of November 2022, a single-engine aircraft made national US news when it crashed through power lines in Gaithersburg, Maryland, coming to rest on a lattice tower.…
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…
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…