Category: Demystifying –  Page 4

What Is Going On With The Boeing 737 Max 8?

The news is dominated right now with the grounding of the Boeing 737 Max 8 after a second fatal crash of a passenger jet which could be related to the onboard systems. There’s a LOT of questionable information out there and many of the explanations presume a certain level of aviation knowledge. I’d like to…

Read more… 15 Mar 19

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 week that the Oceanside Police Department in California has recently acquired a Drone Killer. I had visions of The Terminator but it turns out that…

Read more… 20 Apr 18

Crash in the Desert (Controlled Impact Demonstration)

This post started, as so many of them do, with a seemingly unbelieveable photograph with no attribution information. It didn’t take long to find a Reddit thread discussing the photograph and tracing it to a television show called Destroyed in Seconds, a Discovery Channel series featuring ‘video segments of various things being destroyed quickly”. Episode…

Read more… 10 Nov 17

The 1% rule and air disaster avoidance

I asked my friend, Robert Dawson, to help me understand the numbers behind risk assessment and the 1% rule. Robert writes fantastic science fiction and poetry, however I contacted him in this case because he teaches mathematics in Nova Scotia at Saint Mary’s University and is absolutely excellent at explaining numbers to me. Although he…

Read more… 13 May 16

Airplane Pens

This is a bit of a short post today to make up for all the heavy posts recently. Me, I’m enjoying the long weekend and a bit of sunshine… This photograph from Heathrow Airport was posted to Reddit with the question: What is this plane doing in this enclosed bay? The correct answer is the…

Read more… 25 Mar 16

Factual Version of the Clipper Eclipse crash featured in the Oatmeal

This week The Oatmeal presented a comic strip entitled It’s going to be okay about Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, who survived a plane crash in 1947. It’s a motivational comic meant, the author says, to remind us that our journeys are short. You can read the comic here: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/plane. It’s a lovely…

Read more… 13 Nov 15

Accident Reports

All Aircraft Bite Fools

It was a few minutes after midnight when the pilot and his friend took the Cessna 150, a popular single-engine two-seater training aircraft, out for a local flight around a…

The BEA Weighs In: Ethiopian Airlines flight 302

In March 2019, the Ethiopian Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (EAIB) requested that the French Bureau d’enquêtes et d’Analyses (BEA) support their investigation into the crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight 302. Specifically,…

Demystifying

Sharing a Runway: Fed Ex vs Southwest at Austin

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…

Flying Blind: The Importance of NOTAMs in Aviation

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…

History

The Oldest Footage of Flight

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…

Twin Pioneer Down in Libya: Structural Failure in 1956

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…

Fun Stuff

Messerschmitt Crash in Wernigerode

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…

Aviation Mishaps and Mischief

This week, I’ve collected the best of what I’ve watched and read this month, in hopes that you will be equally intrigued and entertained. Rescued and Dizzy It started when…