Category: Crazy

Unruly Passengers Taken To Task

We’ve all heard the stories of passengers acting out on commercial flights, leading to the coining of the term “air rage“. This is generally described as a new phenomenon, related to entitlement issues of a newer generation, although the earliest case that I found referenced was in 1950, when a “barrel-chested” passenger attacked a cabin…

Read more… 16 Jul 21

How to shoot down a fighter jet…while flying it.

The Grumman F-11 Tiger was a popular US Navy fighter aircraft introduced in 1956. At the time, it was known as the F11F Tiger. Grumman had been working to modernise their Cougar as a part of the Cold War arms race. US aircraft were being outperformed by the swept-wing design of the Soviet’s Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15…

Read more… 21 Aug 20

Wire Strike – RAF Chinook

I’ve never seen anything quite like this. According to forces.net, the Royal Air Force Chinook based at RAF Odiham (Hampshire) was taking part in a low level training sortie on its way to Devon when it struck powerlines, causing a power cut in the local area. The Chinook landed safely in a field in Wales,…

Read more… 7 Aug 20

64-year-old Civilian Ejects Himself from Dassault Rafale B Fighter Jet

Last Wednesday, aviation journalist Clement Charpentreau at Aerotime News shared this hard-to-believe French report involving a French civilian who managed to eject himself from a military jet on a surprise flight given to him as a retirement gift. I loved it and wanted to share it with all of you, so I mailed Clement, who…

Read more… 17 Apr 20

360° at 100 feet

Last week, “Captn Al” called out poor decision making in a video of an 727 doing a low-level 360° when he found the runway occupied by a light aircraft. In a week where there have been videos of poor decision making below MSA, sadly here’s another one. Accidents just don’t happen, they are caused! #flying…

Read more… 13 Dec 19

Crop Duster Crashes in Gender Reveal Stunt

On the 9th of July 2019 an Air Tractor AT-602 crashed in Turkey, Texas. Air Tractors are agricultural aircraft and the AT-602 is a good mid-ranged option for a farmer: a single-seater low-wing taildragger with a range of 600 miles and a 630-gallon chemical hopper for crop-dusting or fertilizer distribution. Air Tractor AT-602 AT-602 :…

Read more… 29 Nov 19

Accident Reports

Lion Air flight 610: In the Cockpit

On the 29th of October 2018, Lion Air flight 610, a Boeing 737-8 (MAX) crashed at Tanjung Karawang, West Java after departing from Jakarta. This crash was the first public…

Crash at Pensacola: "I wasn't ridiculously low"

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…

Demystifying

Maintaining Focus in the Cockpit

This article by Key Dismukes, Grant Young and Robert Sumwait is based on their research at NASA to study the problem of crew preoccupation. They reviewed NTSB reports of accidents…

Maintaining the Stores

We don’t often talk about parked aircraft because it is not very common for them to be involved in crashes. However, one of the side-effects of these pandemic times is…

History

The Mount Erebus Disaster

On the 28th of November 1979, a sight-seeing flight to Antartica crashed into Mount Erebus, killing all 257 on board. The Mount Erebus Disaster, as it came to be known,…

An Icon of Aviation

I have a guest post this week by Nicholas Brown, the Campus President of Spartan College of Aeronautics and Technology. The college has been rebuilding a replica of Little Stinker,…

Fun Stuff

A Little Bit of Everything

There’s so much great aviation writing and video out there and I’m always appreciative when people send me fun things; it seems a shame not to share them! So here’s…

The Tetris Challenge

When the Kantonspolizei Zürich (the police department of the Swiss canton of Zurich) posted a photograph on Facebook showing the contents of a standard patrol car, they had no idea…