Category: Accidents and Incidents – Page 64
Six Exclamations You Never Want to Hear in the Cockpit
6. We’ve lost the cabin! Southwest Flight 812 was climbing through 34,000 feet when there was the sound of an explosion and the oxygen masks dropped. The pilots, recognising a rapid decompression, immediately began a descent. A 5-foot by 1-foot (152cm by 30cm) tear in the fuselage skin opened the aircraft right up and the…
Read more… 10 May 13
Bagram Crash
This week the chilling dashcam video of a Boeing 747 crashing at Bagram airfield has spread across the Internet. I’m not sure there’s much to say about it at this stage but I can’t get it out of my head. Here’s the details as I understand them. Crash: National Air Cargo B744 at Bagram on…
Read more… 3 May 13
£3,400 fine for airspace infringement
This week, a 25-year old pilot was fined £3,400 for airspace infringement. The case was somewhat dramatically reported on in the Herts and Essex observer: Pilot fined after causing havoc over Stansted airport | Uttlesford village headlines The Court Reporter has written up the case, including the claim that, “At one point, Marriott’s poorly-equipped Piper…
Read more… 26 Apr 13
Texting and Flying with no Fuel
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has announced that a pilot sending and receiving text messages was a self-induced distraction and considered a contributing factor in the crash. From the accident report: On August 26, 2011, at 1841 central daylight time (all times cdt), a Eurocopter AS-350-B2 helicopter, N352LN, sustained substantial damage when it impacted…
Read more… 12 Apr 13
Severe Icing in Mountainous Terrain
This ATC recording with an MU-2 in severe icing is not new but it is new to me and it is incredible. I was on the edge of my seat. The MU-2 is made by Mitsubishi. It is a Japanese high-wing, twin-engine turboprop. In the US they were assembled and sold by Mooney but they…
Read more… 5 Apr 13
Pilot Prosecution in New Zealand
I only just became aware of this court case which ended last week. Pacific Blue were a regional airline based in New Zealand. The airline is now Virgin Australia Airlines (NZ). The flight in question was departing from Queenstown, New Zealand for Sydney, Australia. The incident happened on the 22nd of June in 2010. Pacific…
Read more… 29 Mar 13
Accident Analysis
The Anatomy of an A350–CRJ Collision at Atlanta
On the 10th of September 2024, an Airbus A350 took the tail off of a Bombardier CRJ at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Georgia, USA. Delta Air Lines flight 295…
Why KLM Cut the Steering Cables on Two Perfectly Functional Boeing 737s
Last month, we looked at the night of 28th of November 2004 at Barcelona Airport. KLM 1673 ran off the runway at high speed, stopping just short of a canal.…
Demystifying
How Important is Having a Sterile Cockpit?
This question was posted to r/flying by a private pilot who wanted to know: do airline pilots ever engage in small talk about irrelevant things during taxiing, run-up, takeoff, and…
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”…
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
Bird Strikes, Balloon Landings and Falling in Love with a Boeing 777
The exciting news on Fear of Landing this week was a huge scare about critical vulnerabilities in PHP. PHP is widely used on the web, including in WordPress, which is…
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…
