Category: Accidents and Incidents – Page 49
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
“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
Accident Analysis
Fatal SR22 Stall on Final at Barwick LaFayette
On the 20th of March, 2025, a Cirrus SR22 crashed in LaFayette, Georgia during an instructional flight, killing both the pilot and the flight instructor. It was a good flying…
There Is a Parachutist in Front of You
On the 15th of June 2023, a light aircraft crashed into the runway at Aversi private airfield in Denmark. The aircraft, registered in Germany as D-EPRR, was a Cessna TU206G…
Demystifying
Someone has to write the TAF
It turns out that there a person sitting there deciding what the weather is going to do. Which seems obvious, except that I had somehow never asked msyelf who “someone”…
The Pilots, the Probes, and the AF447 Verdict
On the 21st of May 2026, the Paris Court of Appeal convicted Airbus and Air France of involuntary manslaughter for their roles in the crash of Air France flight 447,…
History
The CIA's Shark Screen
Today we have a guest post from the CIA! In their archives, researching something completely different, I found the answer to a question I never thought to ask. I immediately…
The First Jet to Land on an Aircraft Carrier (Deliberately)
“The Vampire was the first jet to land on a moving aircraft carrier deliberately.” This quote from Airshow Luke, our MC at the Legacy of Liberty airshow, made me almost…
Fun Stuff
Petrified, Petrified, Petrified
There’s been some interesting reporting in the UK media about a “near disaster” over Canary Wharf involving the captain having to intervene (the horror!) after air data systems failed on…
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…
