Category: Excerpts –  Page 4

I like foreign places (except when they’re foreign)

I made a mistake. I pitched an aviation article which involves bitching about people not speaking English. Actually, it’s worse than that. This is about people in a foreign country who do speak English … and then there’s me, bitching that their English isn’t good enough. Ugh. Obviously, I didn’t realise that that’s what it…

Read more… 22 Feb 07

Rousse Tower

We sat on the terrace of the Chalet, gazing out at the water and Sark in the distance, while Peter and Mary put up with a torrent of questions about the island and the must-see places. “And while you are exploring the bays, you should go visit the towers, they’ve been put into quite good…

Read more… 11 Jan 07

The Shipwreck of the Stella

The Casquets, the set of towers we’d seen on the flight in, is not surprisingly an important figure within the recent history of the island but the most interesting and tragic story is told at the Maritime Museum: the wreck of the Stella. In the 1890s the competition between the ‘London and South Western’ and…

Read more… 5 Oct 06

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…