Category: Accidents and Incidents –  Page 3

Germanwings 9525: Attempting to Understand

The mindset of the pilot whose suicide flight killed 150 people, crew and passengers, is hard to comprehend. He was the first officer and Pilot Flying of Germanwings flight 9525 and on the 24th of March 2015, he clearly and deliberately crashed an Airbus 320 into the French Alps, killing everyone on board. The Bureau…

Read more… 18 Mar 16

Dissection of a Hard Landing at London City

It was the morning of the 18th of August 2007 in London. The aircraft was HB-IYU, an Avro RJ100, the improved version of the British Aerospace 146 short-haul airliner, with four turbofan engines and a retractable tricycle landing gear (the most common landing gear for modern aircraft). The captain had over 9,000 flying hours, of…

Read more… 11 Mar 16

“Um, have you landed?” Southwest 4013

Flight SWA4013 was a Southwest Airlines scheduled passenger service from Chicago, Illinois to Branson, Missouri. The incident occurred on the 14th of January, 2014. The aircraft was a Boeing 737-7H4 registration N272WN. In the cockpit was the captain, who was Pilot Monitoring, the first officer, who was Pilot Flying, a company dispatcher who observed from…

Read more… 4 Mar 16

The Stolen Boeing

It shouldn’t be so easy to lose an aircraft. Especially a big old airliner. It was 47 metres (153 feet) long and 10 metres (34 feet) high, with a wingspan of 33 metres (108 feet). Twice the height of a giraffe and four times the length of a London bus. The aircraft was a Boeing…

Read more… 19 Feb 16

Merde Merde Merde: Crash Landing in French Field

This video appeared on YouTube last week and shows a cockpit point-of-view of a small aircraft taking off from a grass strip when suddenly the engine fails. Apparently, the pilot was completely unharmed, which surprised me. An anonymous commenter on an aviation forum said that the pilot spent ten years building the plane, a two-seater…

Read more… 12 Feb 16

How to Drop a Gulfstream IV into a Ravine: Habitual Noncompliance

Everyone involved with aviation knows checklists. They are the cornerstone of aviation safety, meant to protect against the ever increasing complexity of aircraft and the limited attention span of the average human. They follow a pattern: a B-32 checklist from 1943 is similar in concept and design to a modern airliner checklist. It would be…

Read more… 5 Feb 16

Accident Reports

Fatal Crash of Blue Angel 6: Military Investigation Released

Yesterday, the United States Department of the Navy released its investigation into the crash of Blue Angel Number 6. The accident occurred on the 2nd of June 2016 during the…

British Airtours Flight 28M - The Components of a Disaster

When morning broke on the 22nd of August 1985, the crew and passengers of a charter flight to Corfu could have no idea that they were going to make aviation…

Demystifying

The 1% rule and air disaster avoidance

I asked my friend, Robert Dawson, to help me understand the numbers behind risk assessment and the 1% rule. Robert writes fantastic science fiction and poetry, however I contacted him…

Airplane Pens

This is a bit of a short post today to make up for all the heavy posts recently. Me, I’m enjoying the long weekend and a bit of sunshine… This…

History

Disaster at the Air Show

ONE OF THE MOST tragic accidents in recent history is hard to reach concrete conclusions about because there are no published investigation results and no final report to be read.…

Wrong Way Corrigan mistakes Ireland for California

The story of how Douglas Corrigan ended up in Ireland while aiming for California is one of my favourites. In fact, I feel sure that I’ve written about him before*.…

Fun Stuff

Cow Takes Down Helicopter

Apologies to those who saw this on Fear of Landing’s Facebook and Twitter accounts, but I know many people only read the blog and I didn’t want anyone to miss…

Fantastic Video of Russian Air Force Combat Aircraft

This is a fantastic video showing the Russian air force aircraft currently in use (well, at least the ones that it is OK for us to know about, right?). Brilliantly…