Category: Accidents and Incidents –  Page 46

The Mysterious Disappearance at Mull

I have friends who live on the Isle of Mull (Scottish Hebrides) and I’ve spent a number of glorious holidays there visiting them. As a result, I was immediately intrigued when I discovered that there was a forty-year-old unsolved aviation mystery at Glenforsa Airfield (which I’ve previously written about here). The facts of the case,…

Read more… 29 Apr 16

Pop Quiz: How high is FL200 in Ireland? This Crew Failed

Sometimes I have nightmares about getting confused in the cockpit and doing something so foolish that pilots all over the world will slap their foreheads in wonder. This is that kind of foolish. There may be snark ahead. The Air Accident Investigation Unit (AAIU) of Ireland released a report on a serious incident which at…

Read more… 22 Apr 16

TransAsia Flight 222 CFIT and criminal charges against ATC

There’s some odd news today which had me scurrying for the original accident report in order to make sense of a court case against two Air Traffic Controllers in Taiwan. TransAsia flight 222 crashed near Magong Airport on the Penghu archipelago on the 23rd of July in 2014. The Aviation Safety Council (ASC) released their…

Read more… 15 Apr 16

Update Regarding FlyDubai flight B981 at Rostov

The Russian Interstate Aviation Committee today released an update on their investigation of the accident in Rostov on the 19th of March. I had been loathe to write about it at the time as the information was fairly tenuous and most of the interesting data was leaked and thus not verifiable. The IAC have not…

Read more… 8 Apr 16

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

Accident Reports

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…

Bomber 139's Third Run: Downhill to Disaster

On the 6th of February 2023, a Boeing 737-3H4 Large Air Tanker crashed into a ridge line of 222 feet elevation in Fitzgerald River National Park in Western Australia. There…

Demystifying

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…

History

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…

The Disappearance of the Hawaii Clipper May Not Be as Mysterious as Was Thought

This week, we have a guest post by J.B. Rivard who wrote an article for the American Aviation Historical Society (AAHS) and used one of my articles as a reference.…

Fun Stuff

The Mystery of the Caged Tyres and the Porcupine Who Flew Home

This photograph was posted to r/shittyaskflying, a subreddit dedicated to asking silly questions and giving silly answers. In this case, the photograph is enough to make one wonder what’s going…

Songs About Failed Spacecraft and Space Disasters

This week, I’m handing over Fear of Landing to my friend Jack Keller who promised me a playlist of music relating to my interests. All of the titles except one…