On Tuesday the 13th of August 2019, a Cessna 172 Skyhawk, registration N84287 crashed into a sand bar on the Escambia River near Jay, Florida, near the Alabama border. The pilot held both commercial pilot and flight instructor certificates with over 1,000 hours flight time, 798 hours in the aircraft make and model. The aircraft…
Read more… 10 Sep 21
On the 11th of July 2021, Virgin Galactic’s space vessel, VSS Unity, was launched from the Spaceport American facility near Truth or Consequences in New Mexico, which I have to admit sounds more like a Hunter S. Thompson novel than a real place. There were two pilots and four passengers on board, including company founder,…
Read more… 3 Sep 21
On Wednesday, the 16th of June, British Airways flight 881 from Moscow arrived at Heathrow airport. The aircraft was registration G-ZBJB, a Boeing 787-8 which had been converted from a passenger aircraft to cargo transport. This was one of four Dreamliner aircraft that British Airways began operating in 2013. The next scheduled flight for the…
Read more… 13 Aug 21
Last week, we looked at an accident in a business jet which ran off the runway during a failed take-off run. I tried to give you all of the information that the investigators would have had at the scene, although as Mendel pointed out, because I removed the date, I obscured the time of year,…
Read more… 30 Jul 21
This accident happened some time ago but it is new to me. A twin-engine business jet departing from Portland, Oregon, crashed shortly after take-off with four on board. The Aerospatiale SN-601 Corvette was developed and manufactured in the 1970s as a response to a government need for a compact twin turbofan engine. Only 40 Corvettes…
Read more… 23 Jul 21
On the 2nd of July 2021, a cargo aircraft ditched in the Pacific near the Hawaiian island of Oahu after experiencing trouble in both engines. The aircraft was a forty-six year old Boeing 737-275C(A) (where apparently the C stands for “cargo/pax Combi” and the A stands for Advanced, with improved range over the original 737-200),…
Read more… 9 Jul 21
Last week, we looked at the sequence of events which led to Flash Airlines flight 604 crashing into the Red Sea a few minutes after take-off. This post assumes you’ve…
On the 3rd of January 2004, Flash Airlines flight 604 crashed into the Red Sea shortly after take-off from Sharm el-Sheikh International in Egypt. The Boeing 737-300 registered in Egypt…
On Monday, two commercial aircraft had a near-miss on the runway at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Texas. The airport at Austin has two parallel concrete runways which run north-to-south: 18L/36R…
On the 11th of January 2023, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the US stopped all departing commercial flights, grounding aircraft all over the US. Hot on the heels of…
About a week ago, Marléne Aviation posted to Twitter in an attempt to find the oldest video footage of a flight. Marléne Aviation is run by a French aviation history…
On the 7th of December 1957, a Scottish Aviation Twin Pioneer 1, registration G-AOEO, departed an airstrip at Anshan in Libya for a routine flight to Tripoli-Idris Airport. There were…
Long-term readings of Fear of Landing know that my favourite aerobatics show of all time is Kyle Franklin’s Ben Whabnoski Comedy act. Just in case some of you haven’t seen…
I didn’t expect to fall in love with the train. When I planned my trip to Germany, I expected that I would be able to keep up with my normal…