Category: Flying – Page 7
Not an auspicious start
Ben, who was going to be flying with me, contacted me on Sunday to say that he was stuck in Copenhagen with a jet whose wheels would not retract. A nice young man named Alistair agreed to adopt me for a few days, so we flew out to Shobdon yesterday where we got stuck on…
Read more… 4 Apr 06
Accident Reports
The Reckless Final Approach of US Bangla Flight 211
The crash of US Bangla flight 211 made international headlines when it occurred on the 12th of March 2018; however, it wasn’t until a month ago that the true sequence…
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…
Demystifying
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…
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…
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…
@FearofLanding
Rudy Jakma on We’re Still Talking about the 737 Max 8Maybe I am overlooking something, but it seems that MCAS requires a special kind of angle of attack sensor. Many…
colintd on We’re Still Talking about the 737 Max 8I would love to believe that national aviation authorities are not under political pressure to "help" approval of their own…
CHip on We’re Still Talking about the 737 Max 8There's a key factor not seen here that was blatant in the Challenger case: crude politics -- Reagan wanted that…