There is an interesting article in Slate Magazine this month: How to land a plane on a highway. – By Tom Vanderbilt – Slate Magazine There are no hard numbers on annual occurrences of airplane landings on highways or streets, but a troll through the Federal Aviation Administration’s incident database shows that there tend to…
Read more… 26 Mar 10
In my post about Swissair Flight 111, I referred to Northwest Flight 188: NTSB Synopsis DCA10IA001 On Wednesday, October 21, 2009, at 1756 mountain daylight time, an Airbus A320, N374NW, operating as Northwest Airlines (NWA) flight 188, became a NORDO (no radio communications) flight at 37,000 feet. The flight was operating as a 14 Code…
Read more… 19 Mar 10
I was talking to someone about the Northwest Flight 188 – the one where both pilots somehow managed to get so distracted that they missed their destination and did not respond for over an hour. I expressed some indignation that the FAA had revoked the licences of both pilots without waiting for the NTSB report.…
Read more… 5 Mar 10
Yesterday, the National Transportation Safety Board issued its final report on the Continental Flight 3407. On 12 February 2009, the plane lost control on approach to Buffalo, New York and crashed into a residential building, killing the crew and all of the passengers as well as a person on the ground. You can read the…
Read more… 26 Feb 10
Yesterday morning, Joseph Andrew Stack flew his single-engine plane into the Echelon building in North Austin, Texas. He left Georgetown airfield and flew directly to the location – low and at full speed – before crashing into the building. It was quickly confirmed that this was intentional, a controlled flight into a building which housed…
Read more… 19 Feb 10
One question I didn’t deal with in my Frequently Asked Questions was whether the Saratoga has oxygen. The plane does have an oxygen tank and you can plug masks in on the ceiling to take it in directly. We’ve never used the supplemental oxygen other than to test to make sure it’s really there. The…
Read more… 6 Nov 09
Leeds Bradford Airport in England, perched on a windy hilltop, is known for its challenging conditions. But even by Leeds standards, the conditions on the 20th of October 2023 were…
Last year, I wrote about a Cessna 210 which suffered an engine failure while downwind at Bankstown Airport in New South Wales, Australia. I’ll quickly recap the controller and pilot…
There are a number of reasons why you might need to quickly point out the differences between a General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon and a Eurofighter EF2000 Typhoon. You might…
A few days ago (21st of May 2024), Singapore Airlines flight SQ321 encountered heavy turbulence on a passenger flight from London-Heathrow to Singapore. There were 229 on board, including eighteen…
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…
This week, we have a guest post by J.B. Rivard who wrote an article for the American Aviation Historical Society (AAHS) and used one of my articles as a reference.…
Mistakes were made. All of them were mine. Before I left for Dresden, I planned out my full itinerary. Berlin is a much busier airport than Tallinn, so I needed…
I’m in Dresden at the moment and I’m afraid I haven’t had a free moment to write you a new article. Luckily, lots of other people are on the internet…