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
In the cockpit of Southwest flight 1380
On the 17th of April in 2018, Southwest Airlines flight 1330 experienced an engine failure while climbing to cruise altitude. The aircraft was a Boeing 737-7H4 (registration N772SW) with two…
Going Around: Bulgaria Air Charter flight 8115
It was 4am on the 16th of July 2018 when the Bulgaria Air Charter flight crew arrived at the airport, an hour before the scheduled 05:12 flight 8115 from Catania…
Demystifying
How do you pronounce…?
This is a very interesting article by Allen Amsbaugh which was originally published in NASA’s ASRS Directline about the issues of navigational fixes which sound or look similar. The ASRS…
Flightradar 24 and aircraft tracking
Flightradar24 (FR24) is a global flight tracking site which offers realtime information about flights by tracking ADS-B. ADS-B stands for automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast. This is a means for an aircraft…
History
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…
The Real “Bionic Man”
Some of you may have spotted the recent comments on Wingless Flight in the M2-F1 by aerospace journalist and author Nigel Macknight, who had written about NASA’s M2-F2 pilot Milt…
Fun Stuff
Microsoft Flight Simulator: The Good, The Bad And The Ugly
Microsoft Flight Simulator has released a new version, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, fourteen years after the release of Microsoft Flight Simulator X. The timing couldn’t be better, of course, with…
Toddler Overboard and other aviation videos
I’ve got quite a collection of interesting videos building up so it’s past time for me to share them! These are not all brand new but new to me and…
@FearofLanding
Mendel on In the cockpit of Southwest flight 1380From the final report: "For example, according to CVR information, during the 17 minutes between the time of the engine…
Rudy Jakma on In the cockpit of Southwest flight 1380That makes sense Chip. It also would confirm your observation that the aircraft was not severely damaged, otherwise an engine…
Harrow on In the cockpit of Southwest flight 1380The details of a flight plan often do not survive even the closing of the boarding gate, much less any…
CHip on In the cockpit of Southwest flight 1380The Wikipedia article says The aircraft, N772SW, a Boeing 737-7H4 was subsequently flown to Boeing in Everett, WA on April…
R Waskin on In the cockpit of Southwest flight 1380Re fuel and souls on board, isn't that information contained in the flight plan? I'm a private pilot, not commercial,…
Jon on In the cockpit of Southwest flight 1380Hear Hear! It is what they are trained to do, and they did very well. You hear often about how…