Category: Accidents and Incidents – Page 13
From Mayday to Miracle: Cessna Bellylanding at Bankstown
On the 26th of May 2024, a private pilot in a Cessna T210 Centurion II suffered an engine failure while downwind at Bankstown Airport in New South Wales, Australia. What followed was an emergency landing on video that will make you sweat. The pilot and one passenger, his wife, were on a private flight between…
Read more… 19 Jul 24
The Fenestron Factor: Cabri G2 Crash in Gruyéres
The Swiss Transportation Safety Investigation Board (STSB) has released the final report for the Cabri G2 light helicopter crash in Gruyères, Switzerland in 2022. I wrote about it at the time, but I’m repeating the information and the videos here for reference. The final report is only available in French, with no mention of it…
Read more… 28 Jun 24
Hail Damage to Austrian Airlines A320
I’ve been intrigued by the photographs being passed around of the Austrian Airlines Airbus A320 that flew into a hailstorm. We’ve seen some hail-battered planes before but this one took the nose cone right off! Austrian Airlines, a subsidiary of Lufthansa, is the flag carrier of Austria. They ordered four new Airbus A320neo aircraft in…
Read more… 21 Jun 24
Cessna 172M forced landing after go-around in New South Wales
On the 15th of October 2023, a private pilot rented a Cessna 172M from Air Gold Coast for a private flight from Gold Coast Airport, Queensland, to Murwilumbah, New South Wales. The aircraft, registered as VH-JUA, was 47 years old and had been in Australia since 1989. It had over 14,000 hours, although there were…
Read more… 14 Jun 24
Continental flight 11
Sixty-two years ago, on the 22nd of May 1962, Continental Airlines flight 11 broke up at 39,000 feet. Flight 11 was the last flight of the day: a one-hour commuter flight from Chicago O’Hare, Illinois, to Kansas City, Missouri. It was a stormy Tuesday evening and only half of the seats had been sold. The…
Read more… 7 Jun 24
Airbus rejects take off at Zürich
On the 27th of October 2023, Edelweiss Air flight WK298B was a commercial flight from Zürich Airport, Switzerland to Faro Airport in Portugal. The aircraft was a twenty-four year old Airbus A320-214 registered in Switzerland as HB-IHY. On board were two flight crew, five cabin crew and 106 passengers. Zürich Airport has six runways (10/28,…
Read more… 17 May 24
Accident Analysis
Why KLM Cut the Steering Cables on Two Perfectly Functional Boeing 737s
Last month, we looked at the night of 28th of November 2004 at Barcelona Airport. KLM 1673 ran off the runway at high speed, stopping just short of a canal.…
KLM 1673 Veers Off the Runway with Full Right Rudder
On the 28th of November 2004, a Boeing B737 ran off the runway at Barcelona Airport. The weather had been good at Barcelona that evening. The flight crew agreed to land…
Demystifying
How Important is Having a Sterile Cockpit?
This question was posted to r/flying by a private pilot who wanted to know: do airline pilots ever engage in small talk about irrelevant things during taxiing, run-up, takeoff, and…
Someone has to write the TAF
It turns out that there a person sitting there deciding what the weather is going to do. Which seems obvious, except that I had somehow never asked msyelf who “someone”…
History
The CIA's Shark Screen
Today we have a guest post from the CIA! In their archives, researching something completely different, I found the answer to a question I never thought to ask. I immediately…
The First Jet to Land on an Aircraft Carrier (Deliberately)
“The Vampire was the first jet to land on a moving aircraft carrier deliberately.” This quote from Airshow Luke, our MC at the Legacy of Liberty airshow, made me almost…
Fun Stuff
Bird Strikes, Balloon Landings and Falling in Love with a Boeing 777
The exciting news on Fear of Landing this week was a huge scare about critical vulnerabilities in PHP. PHP is widely used on the web, including in WordPress, which is…
Petrified, Petrified, Petrified
There’s been some interesting reporting in the UK media about a “near disaster” over Canary Wharf involving the captain having to intervene (the horror!) after air data systems failed on…
