These posts and articles of injured aircraft caught my eye this week and I couldn’t help but think that they’d interest you as well. Although it makes my stomach cramp up to see crumpled pieces of plane, in every instance below there were no fatalities. Once you see the images below, I think you’ll agree…
Read more… 27 Aug 10
Last week, an Azerbaijan Airlines Airbus 319 collapsed at the end of the runway at Atatürk International Airport in Istanbul. The nose-gear and fuselage appear to be severely damaged. There were no injuries. Azerbaijan Airlines is the state-owned airline of the Republic of Azerbaijan, an independent Turkic state. The flight from their base in Baku,…
Read more… 13 Aug 10
On the 24th of July, Tony Weedn’s engine failed. He was flying a Cessna 172 with three passengers in Florida en route to Orlando. Weedn is a very experienced pilot who dealt with the emergency professionally and brought the plane down safely onto a local golf course. Pilot makes emergency landing on 17th Hole at…
Read more… 6 Aug 10
On the 23rd of July 1983, Air Canada Flight 143 ran out of fuel at FL410 – 26,000 feet halfway through a 2,829 kilometre (1,768 mile) flight from Montreal to Edmonton. The Boeing 767-200 carrying 61 passengers managed to glide to safety to the Gimli Industrial Park Airport in Manitoba, a Canadian prairie province. What…
Read more… 23 Jul 10
On 17 January 2008, British Airways Flight 38 crash-landed short of the runway at Heathrow Airport. At the time, the newspapers were filled with mad speculation about the cause of the accident, ranging from computer failures, bird strikes, electronic glitches, low quality fuel and wind shear. Within two days I had had enough of the…
Read more… 28 May 10
Last Sunday I heard about a surprising incident at North Weald, one of my favourite airfields and the location where the Saratoga is currently parked and waiting for me to pay it some attention. It seems that this Aero AT-3 was coming into land when something went wrong. The main runway was closed for a…
Read more… 14 May 10
Any Landing You Can Float Away From: Successful Ditching in the Arctic
On the 29th of July 2024, a light aircraft encountered engine trouble off the coast of Greenland and was forced to ditch in the North Atlantic. The aircraft was a…
Bomber 139's Third Run: What the Investigation Found
In order to follow this analysis, you’ll need to have the details of the flight and the crash from last week’s article about the flight. When we last saw Bomber…
Another quick round of questions and answers
It’s time for another Questions and Answers session. I started this series a few years back, when a reader asked if there was a way to pose aviation questions outside…
Durga Puja Pandal Shows Air India Flight 171 Crash
The following video from a religious festival in West Bengal, India, has caught a lot of social media attention. It shows a detailed representation of an Air India Boeing Dreamliner…
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…
The Disappearance of the Hawaii Clipper May Not Be as Mysterious as Was Thought
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.…
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…