Category: Accidents and Incidents – Page 47
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
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…
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
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…
