In 2010, Continental Airlines was convicted of involuntary manslaughter for the Air France Flight 4590 disaster in Paris a decade earlier. Continental called the judgement “absurd” and vowed to appeal. That appeal has now started in Versaille this month. The crash, in July 2000, is described as “the beginning of the end” of Concorde’s commercial…
Read more… 16 Mar 12
If you’ve flown a retractable, you’ve had it drummed into you: put the undercarriage down, check you put the undercarriage down and then check it once on short final. I came close, once. I was doing a circuit to land at North Weald. I wanted to get around quickly and took a decision not to…
Read more… 9 Mar 12
It was an uneventful night. The crew went on duty on Thursday night at 20:40 for scheduled passenger flights on a Boeing 737-800 from Lanzarote to Glasgow and back. Friday morning, on the return leg, their work is almost done. The First Officer is flying and the Captain has taken the opportunity to have a…
Read more… 2 Mar 12
The plane went missing on the 10th of August in 1984. It was a Cessna L-19E “Bird Dog” – a two-seater liaison and observation aircraft built for the US Military. L-19 Crash Documents [The pilot] had been offered a contract by the Colorado Dept. of Forestry to videotape a particularly nasty type of beetle infestation…
Read more… 10 Feb 12
(Before I start, I want to share some exciting news. You Fly Like a Woman appeared in Forbes this week! And it was reviewed – in Dutch and English! – on Aviationbookreviews. I would never have written the book without the support of the blog readers, so here’s a big THANK YOU to all of…
Read more… 3 Feb 12
I just discovered this great video footage of a US Coast Guard rescue in the Bahamas. It happened just last week. Dr. Richard McGlaughlin and his daughter Elaine were flying his Cirrus SR22 to Haiti to do charity work, something Mr McGlaughlin has done regularly since the earthquake. Dr. McG’s Haiti Chronicles – Cirrus Owners…
Read more… 13 Jan 12
Ferry Tank Failure: Successful SR22 Ditching in the Pacific
In 2015, I shared a video of an SR22 whose pilot successfully deployed his Cirrus Airframe Parachute System (CAPS) off of the coast of Maui, Hawai’i. I wrote at the time…
The Man in the Right Seat at Prestwick
On the 23rd of April 2024, a Piper Archer II crashed in South Ayrshire, Scotland, after losing power. There were two on board. Both suffered serious injuries and the light…
Meowing on Guard (an attempt at an explanation)
Last week a video went viral and it’s been fun to see the mainstream media coverage try to cover two pilots who were heard making animal noises on the radio. …
Trump Threatens to Ground Canadian Aircraft Over Gulfstream Certification
The US President, Donald Trump, posted the following to Truth Social last night. Based on the fact that Canada has wrongfully, illegally, and steadfastly refused to certify the Gulfstream 500,…
Four Point Two Stars Where You Only Stop If You Have To
I always look up airports when I’m writing about them, partly out of habit and partly because I’m afraid I’ll miss an important detail. When I was writing Any Landing…
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…
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…