Category: Crazy

Is Getting A Blow Job While Flying Reckless?

Let me warn you up front that this post is not necessarily safe for reading at work or in mixed company. It’s not often that I struggle to get through an aviation incident without sniggering but this is one of those times. I first read about this in the Reddit’s r/aviation forum and it was just…

Read more… 23 Nov 18

Please Keep Your Feet In The Cockpit At All Times

The subject line on Reddit said Don’t start your airplane with your feet outside the cockpit so as you can imagine, I had to click. And having seen the story behind it, I now have to share it with you. The incident, involving a Piper Cherokee and a parked Cessna 172, took place at Orange…

Read more… 1 Jun 18

Aircraft Parked at the Pub

This is one of my favourite aviation stories of all time, honestly, just for the headline potential. Man in Australia Arrested for Driving Wingless Plane to Bar Plane Taxied Down Main Street to Newman Pub Fine for man who taxied plane down Newman street and stopped at pub The original incident, which took place in…

Read more… 16 Mar 18

Lakeside Ryder Cup Tickets: easy with a seaplane! Or maybe not…

The Ryder Cup is one of the premiere golfing competitions between the US and Europe (originally Great Britain) which is held every other year. This year, the matches were held at the Hazeltine National Golf Club in Chaska, Minnesota. Hazeltine National Golf Club is a private club and usually closed to guests not accompanied by…

Read more… 9 Dec 16

Mystery Mali Boeing

On the 2nd of November in 2009, a burnt-out Boeing 727 was discovered abandoned in the Saharan desert of Mali in west Africa. The initial reaction was that the Boeing must have crash-landed on this spot but investigators soon discovered that it had landed safely on the make-shift desert airstrip — a dried out lake…

Read more… 18 Nov 16

Cow Takes Down Helicopter

Apologies to those who saw this on Fear of Landing’s Facebook and Twitter accounts, but I know many people only read the blog and I didn’t want anyone to miss it. This is a Robinson R22 Beta which was dragged out of the air by a cow. Well, no, it’s unfair to accuse the cow…

Read more… 23 Sep 16

Accident Reports

ATC and the Pilot Who Turned Back

Last week we looked at a general aviation crash in which the pilot reported a Mayday as a result of an engine failure. Eight minutes later, the pilot crashed into…

The Pilot Turned Back: Engine Failure Leads to Fatal Crash

On the 26th of July a single-engine light aircraft crashed in the woods near Colbert, Oklahoma while attempting a forced landing. The pilot had reported his emergency ten minutes earlier…

Demystifying

Thirty Years Since Air France Flight 296

Thirty years ago, on the 26th of June 1988, a brand new Airbus A320 crashed during a demonstration of its fly-by-wire capabilities, killing three passengers and demolishing the plane as…

Drone Killer

When I’m not obsessing about aviation, I write speculative fiction, including science fiction featuring near-future technology. So you can imagine I was pretty excited when I saw a headline last…

History

Building a B-29 Piece by Piece

I’m in Austria this week, giving a presentation about the representation of old women in science fiction. So it seemed only right to celebrate a woman in aviation who might…

The Odd Story of Richard Floyd McCoy Jr

I’ve been working hard on volume two of Without a Trace and, of course, I can’t resist a chapter on Dan Cooper, who successfully hijacked a Northwest Orient aircraft and…

Fun Stuff

For your amusement: weird and interesting NOTAMS

I was browsing around looking for interesting news when I saw that Reddit user justachamelion had posted a great question for /r/AskReddit: Pilots of Reddit, what are the weirdest or…

In case you were wondering what to get me for Christmas

There are lots of private jets up for sale but this one is special… It is a 1962 Lockheed JetStar 1329. The JetStar was a private project at Lockheed, originally…