In the early hours on the 8th of January in 2016, a cargo plane was reported missing in northern Sweden. The West Air Bombadier CRJ-200 made a single MAYDAY call at 01:30 before disappearing from radar. A Norwegian Air Force F-16 discovered the crash site on a mountain plateau in Lapland an hour later, northwest…
Read more… 25 Aug 17
Malaysia Airlines flight 370 has been in the headlines again and for the first time in quite a while, I’d like to talk about the real news behind the news. Some of the mainstream papers have been less than clear about what the new data is, let alone its importance. Also, somewhat frustratingly, the key…
Read more… 18 Aug 17
On the 25th of June 2017, Air Asia flight D7237, an Airbus A330 registration 9M-XXE, suffered an in-flight engine fault ninety minutes into a scheduled flight from Perth to Kulala Lumpur. There was a loud sudden noise and then the aircraft began shuddering violently. The pilot spoke to Berita Harian after the incident and the…
Read more… 11 Aug 17
There was a serious runway incursion at Brussels Airport on the 5th of October 2016, when an Embraer ERJ-195LR crossed in front of the path of a landing Airbus A320-214. The Belgian Air Accident Investigation Unit released their report last week and it’s a good study on how minor inconveniences can pile up into creating…
Read more… 21 Jul 17
When I first glanced at this accident report, I was surprised and unhappy that the UAE General Civil Aviation Authority seemed to be scolding the captain for what seems to me to have been an entirely logical response to an emergency. It wasn’t until I read the whole report that it became clear that the…
Read more… 30 Jun 17
Last weekend the last Sea Vixen executed an emergency belly landing at the Royal Naval Air Station in Yeovilton. The aircraft was flying back from the Duxford Air Show in Cambridgeshire when the pilot contacted Yeovilton Tower to ask for a visual of the landing gear. The controller confirmed that the undercarriage was clean, which…
Read more… 2 Jun 17
Any Landing You Can Float Away From: Successful Ditching in the Arctic
On the 29th of July 2024, a light aircraft encountered engine trouble off the coast of Greenland and was forced to ditch in the North Atlantic. The aircraft was a…
Bomber 139's Third Run: What the Investigation Found
In order to follow this analysis, you’ll need to have the details of the flight and the crash from last week’s article about the flight. When we last saw Bomber…
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…
Durga Puja Pandal Shows Air India Flight 171 Crash
The following video from a religious festival in West Bengal, India, has caught a lot of social media attention. It shows a detailed representation of an Air India Boeing Dreamliner…
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…