Well, 2024 sure has arrived with a bang. It’s a little too soon to draw firm conclusions about the MAX 9 incident, but let’s see what we’ve got so far. On the 5th of January, a Boeing 737-900 MAX registered in the US as N704AL was operating Alaska Airlines flight 1282, a scheduled passenger flight…
Read more… 12 Jan 24
On the 2nd of January 2024 at 17:47 local time (08:47 GMT), an Airbus A350 collided with a de Havilland Canada DHC-8 Q300 (Dash 8) at Haneda International Airport in Tokyo. There are still many questions, but let’s put together what we know so far. Japan Airlines flight 516 departed Shin-Chitose airport, which serves the…
Read more… 5 Jan 24
An abridged video of this landing was recently posted on Reddit. The flight took place in July 2021 and the video footage went viral in the weeks that followed. The aircraft lands safely, but it’s quite a textbook example of bad airmanship. The popular version of the video is a thirty-second excerpt where it can…
Read more… 15 Dec 23
On the 27th of July 2018, an experienced pilot departed with ten parachutists on board for a routine drop mission. It was the pilot’s fourth flight of the day in the Pilatus PC-6 Porter, a single-engine aircraft popular with parachuting and skydiving operations for its short take-off and landing capabilities and low maintenance requirements. The…
Read more… 8 Dec 23
On the 4th of October 2023, an Airbus A321neo located in London Stansted was prepared for a multi-day charter flight in the US. There were three pilots and six cabin crew on board, as well as an engineer and a loadmaster. This first flight was repositioning the aircraft and crew from London to Orlando International…
Read more… 24 Nov 23
You may remember this 2010 incident from Aviation Herald’s great reporting which led to international attention to the case. I wrote about Aviation Herald’s work on this in: 83ft above the sea at night and no investigation?. Initially, the Norwegian authorities dismissed the idea that the incident required official attention. Only after significant pressure from…
Read more… 10 Nov 23
Fatal SR22 Stall on Final at Barwick LaFayette
On the 20th of March, 2025, a Cirrus SR22 crashed in LaFayette, Georgia during an instructional flight, killing both the pilot and the flight instructor. It was a good flying…
There Is a Parachutist in Front of You
On the 15th of June 2023, a light aircraft crashed into the runway at Aversi private airfield in Denmark. The aircraft, registered in Germany as D-EPRR, was a Cessna TU206G…
The Pilots, the Probes, and the AF447 Verdict
On the 21st of May 2026, the Paris Court of Appeal convicted Airbus and Air France of involuntary manslaughter for their roles in the crash of Air France flight 447,…
Meowing on Guard (an attempt at an explanation)
Last week a video went viral and it’s been fun to see the mainstream media coverage try to cover two pilots who were heard making animal noises on the radio. …
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…
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…
Aviation Stories You Might Have Missed
I hope you all are having a wonderful holiday season. This week, I’ve put together a compilation of interesting items in the press that you might have missed while enjoying…