Last week, the NTSB held the Asiana Flight 214 Investigative Hearing. On the 6th of July 2013, Asiana Flight 214, a scheduled passenger flight from Incheon, South Korea to San Francisco, CA, crashed on final approach after striking the seawall a few hundred feet short of the runway. The investigation is continuing but a key…
Read more… 13 Dec 13
Last week, international news headlines were filled with the headlines of a Boeing 747 that landed at the wrong airport. Meanwhile, pilots all over the world cringed at the thought of making that kind of mistake and ending up in the media spotlight. But of course the question on most people’s lips has been, how…
Read more… 22 Nov 13
UK news headlines have highlighted a near miss over Scotland in June this year, when two Boeing 747s lost separation. In the UK, an aviation near miss is known as an airprox and the UK Airprox Board has just released a compendium of the airprox incidents assessed at their September 2013 meeting. I was immediately…
Read more… 25 Oct 13
Special thanks to Mark Nolan who filled me in on this and made scans of the original investigation available to me so that I could use primary sources for this post. On the 9th of August in 1981, a Cessna 210 registration VH-MDX was on a booked flight from Prosperpine to Bankstown, with a refueling…
Read more… 11 Oct 13
Last week, the National Transportation Safety Board released an accident brief about the emergency descent of Southwest Airlines flight 812 to Yuma, Arizona on the 1st of April, 2011. At 34,000 feet, climbing through to FL360, there was a loud sharp noise. The cabin experienced rapid decompression. Shawna Malvini Redden, a passenger on the flight,…
Read more… 4 Oct 13
It made international news: David Riggs’ body was discovered on Friday by a search and rescue team diving a lake in northeastern China after a Lancair 320, carrying the pilot and his translator, struck the surface and crashed. David Riggs, notorious stunt pilot who lost his pilot’s license twice, had been in the news –…
Read more… 27 Sep 13
KLM 1673 Veers Off the Runway with Full Right Rudder
On the 28th of November 2004, a Boeing B737 ran off the runway at Barcelona Airport. The weather had been good at Barcelona that evening. The flight crew agreed to land…
Social Media Influencers Weigh Down Aircraft
The fatal crash at Scottsdale Arizona took place directly after take-off. The passengers were a self-proclaimed crowd of social media influencers. The jet-setting influencer who had organised the flight, had…
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…