This is a guest post by my friend Matthew Warburton, looking at the recent incident of Air India Flight AI676. I hope you enjoy it! Rookie errors can happen to any of us, no matter who we are or what we are doing. The difference is that any mistake can be very costly when you…
Read more… 7 Nov 17
Last week, we looked at the details of Steve Fossett’s disappearance and crash but there were some issues I just couldn’t fit in. This week, I want to look at some of the loose ends and questions … and also the questions brought up in the comments. Did hypoxia or some other impairment play a…
Read more… 3 Nov 17
It was the 3rd of September in 2007 at around 09:30 local time in California when a Bellanca 8KCAB-180 (Super Decathlon) registration N240R disappeared in the ‘Nevada Triangle’. The 63-year-old pilot was Steve Fossett, a famous aviator and sailor. He is still the holder of multiple world records, including the fastest east-to-west transcontinental record for…
Read more… 27 Oct 17
On Monday, a cargo loader burst into flames while preparing to load American Airlines flight 192 from Hong Kong to Los Angeles. There’s a lot of embedded video on this post so if you are reading on the mailing list, you might want to click through to the post to view them. #hongKong #americanairlines Cargo…
Read more… 13 Oct 17
I have been working on a collection of aviation mysteries Without a Trace and so, of course, I was immediately interested when I saw that debris from a plane crash had been found sixty years after an aircraft had disappeared. Lieutenant William Thomas Barry Troy enlisted in the Royal Canada Navy in 1947, when he…
Read more… 6 Oct 17
On the 14th of February in 2010, a private jet disappeared from radar in German airspace eleven minutes after taking off for a routine ferry flight from the Czech Republic to Sweden. I wrote a short piece about this accident a few years back but the accident report hadn’t been published yet. Now that I’ve…
Read more… 15 Sep 17
TNflygirl and the Beech Debonair
On the 7th of December 2023, a Beech 35-C33 Debonair crashed into terrain. The private pilot and the passenger, the pilot’s father, were both killed on impact. The private flight…
At All Costs
On the 11th of December 2024, the passenger in the right seat of a 1973 Grumman AA-5 was recording a video as they approached Pearland Regional Airport in Texas. The…
Trump Threatens to Ground Canadian Aircraft Over Gulfstream Certification
The US President, Donald Trump, posted the following to Truth Social last night. Based on the fact that Canada has wrongfully, illegally, and steadfastly refused to certify the Gulfstream 500,…
Another quick round of questions and answers
It’s time for another Questions and Answers session. I started this series a few years back, when a reader asked if there was a way to pose aviation questions outside…
Four Point Two Stars Where You Only Stop If You Have To
I always look up airports when I’m writing about them, partly out of habit and partly because I’m afraid I’ll miss an important detail. When I was writing Any Landing…
Gladys Ingle Inflight Wheel Change: Emergency Action or Stunt?
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…
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…
Nathan Pyle Strange Worlds
Thank you so much for all the kind words. I don’t quite have the wherewithal to respond to each of you individually but I very much appreciate all of you…