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
If you like reading about plane crashes and investigations, why not take a look at my ebook series, Why Planes Crash. It’s full of explanations and photographs of 21st century aviation incidents. I think you’ll find it interesting. I found this on an aviation forum and I just can’t stop staring at the photographs. N9368D…
Read more… 30 Oct 09
This Press Advisory just in. The bold text is my addition. NTSB Advisory National Transportation Safety Board Washington, DC 20594 August 17, 2009 NTSB RELIEVES AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLERS GROUP OF PARTY STATUS IN HUDSON RIVER MIDAIR COLLISION INVESTIGATION The National Transportation Safety Board today removed the National Air Traffic Controllers Association as a party to…
Read more… 17 Aug 09
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.…
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”…
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…
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…