On Tuesday there was an engine fire at McCarran International Airport which has made headline news in the US and the UK. A key reason that this incident is so incredibly interesting is because, despite the fire burning hot enough to melt windows on the aircraft, there were no serious injuries and no loss of…
Read more… 11 Sep 15
It was 05:17, just a few minutes past dawn, when the police saw the flight crew board the aircraft. The take-off time for the charter flight taking holiday makers from Oslo to the sunny island of Crete was 05:45. There were five crew members: two pilots and three cabin crew. Four of them were drunk.…
Read more… 21 Aug 15
The AAIB have released their report on the incident involving Airbus A319-131 G-EUOE at London Heathrow Airport on 24 May 2013. This is one of those reports where I find I’m clenching my teeth as it becomes clear how much has gone wrong. This incident begins the night before on the 23rd of May. The…
Read more… 7 Aug 15
In light of the news this week (which is great news for unravelling the mystery of what happened to Malaysia Airlines flight 370), I thought it might be useful to try to explain some of the issues being talked about in the press. I know there’s a lot of news coverage at the moment; still,…
Read more… 31 Jul 15
I did it! It’s taken a lot longer than I expected, but the second book in the Why Planes Crash series is finally finished! I want to thank everyone on Fear of Landing for their support in this; it’s through this website that I discovered that my obsessions were shared with so many of you.…
Read more… 14 Jul 15
This story started, as so many do, with an interesting photograph posted to Reddit. I was curious, and decided to investigate the accident. The sequence of events that led to the wreck was a lot more fascinating than I expected. The airline was initially set up as the Makhachkala division of Aeroflot in 1927. In…
Read more… 10 Jul 15
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…
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,…
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…
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…