Category: Accidents and Incidents –  Page 3

In the cockpit of Southwest flight 1380

On the 17th of April in 2018, Southwest Airlines flight 1330 experienced an engine failure while climbing to cruise altitude. The aircraft was a Boeing 737-7H4 (registration N772SW) with two turbofan engines manufactured by CFM International. The CFM-7B24 engine has 24 fan blades installed on the fan disk. The flight departed normally from LaGuardia Airport…

Read more… 18 Sep 20

When Not To Go Around

We spend a lot of time talking about bad landings where the pilot(s) should have broken off the approach and gone around. It’s common to continue to try to land at all costs even when the simpler and more sensible option would be to go around and try again. I thought it was worth looking…

Read more… 11 Sep 20

Man vs Machine: the autopilot would not switch off

Two cargo pilots on a routine cargo flight from Jersey to Guernsey, a twenty-minute flight, ended up in quite a muddle including auto-pilot issues, a go around and elevator control problems before making a safe landing back in Jersey, where they started. The incident took place on the approach to Guernsey on the 26th of…

Read more… 14 Aug 20

Going Around: Bulgaria Air Charter flight 8115

It was 4am on the 16th of July 2018 when the Bulgaria Air Charter flight crew arrived at the airport, an hour before the scheduled 05:12 flight 8115 from Catania Airport (LICC) in Italy to Tarbes-Lourdes-Pyrénées Airport (LFBT) in France. The aircraft was a McDonnell Douglas MD-823 registration LZ-LDM. The MD-80 series is a mid-range…

Read more… 1 Aug 20

Arrow Air flight 1285: icing or explosion?

On the 12th of December 1985, a DC-8 Jetliner operating as Arrow Air flight 1285 crashed on departure from Gander, Canada. This was an international charter flight carrying US troops from Cairo, Egypt to their home base of Fort Campbell, Kentucky, with stops to refuel at Cologne in West Germany and at Gander. The flight…

Read more… 24 Jul 20

Garuda Airbus A330 stuck in the mud

It was some time ago when I managed to get the Piper Saratoga so bogged down in the mud that my aircraft had to be towed out by four strong men and a landrover. I was attempting a short cut, in a rush to depart, and thought that I could save time by cutting across…

Read more… 3 Jul 20

Accident Reports

A Lesson On Keeping The Aircraft in Trim

On the 28th of May 2019, a customer arrived at a flight school at Archerfield Airport, Queensland for their first flight experience. The aircraft that day was a Cessna 152,…

Explosive Decompression on the Ground

The Gulfstream G150, a twin-engine business jet, arrived at Kittilä airport in Lapland on a cold Tuesday afternoon on the 2nd of January 2018, carrying three crew and four passengers.…

Demystifying

How Many Successful Ditchings of Commercial Airliners?

When I was learning to fly, I remember someone in the pilots’ bar insisting that all that talk about life jackets under your seat was a waste of time; if…

Small Plane Gets Stoned

This photograph has been posted to aviation forums repeatedly, each time with a thread of pilots wondering what the hell could have happened to cause the light aircraft to be…

History

The History Listen

I was on the radio on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, in a show called The History Listen. They asked me to tell them about a famous story in Australian and…

The Last Flight of B121-120

The Beagle B.121 Pup is a British, single-engine, all-metal aircraft produced in the 1960s. British Executive and General Aviation Limited, who traded as BEAGLE, designed the Beagle B.121 Pup as…

Fun Stuff

The Tetris Challenge

When the Kantonspolizei Zürich (the police department of the Swiss canton of Zurich) posted a photograph on Facebook showing the contents of a standard patrol car, they had no idea…

The History Listen

I was on the radio on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, in a show called The History Listen. They asked me to tell them about a famous story in Australian and…