Category: Fun Stuff – Page 9
The Man Who Ate a Cessna
It’s clear by now that I’m obsessively rather interested in planes but not in a weird way. I usually limit myself to considering how they fly, how they look while they are flying, and how they sound when they pass overhead. I’ve never actually considered how they taste. One man did, however. Michel Lotito, a…
Read more… 18 Sep 15
Accident Updates and Dead Planes
I’ve booked a holiday! If the Welsh weather is good enough for the boat to make it across the sound, I’ll be staying on Skokholm Island for a week. There’s no wifi there so I’ve collected my recent favourite articles and videos to keep you busy until my return. I hope you enjoy! I loved…
Read more… 28 Aug 15
The Hoverboard is Not So Hot (Supercool!)
OK, so you all know that I really really want a jetpack. However, I have decided that under the circumstances, I’ll settle for a hoverboard. Specifically the one in this viral video from Lexus. Is that not the most amazing skateboard ever? It’s straight out of science fiction. The hoverboard has high temperature superconducting blocks…
Read more… 14 Aug 15
New Design!
A few months ago I saw some people talking about Fear of Landing on Reddit, which was pretty cool, except that one of them said “Yeah, but what’s up with the 1990s web design, wow.” I looked at my darling website, which actually was designed in 2006, thank-you-very-much, with a redesign in 2008, and I…
Read more… 30 Jul 15
Tom Cruise: Hanging on a Wing and a Prayer
Are you looking forward to the new Mission Impossible movie? I don’t usually talk about Hollywood on here (other than for debunking purposes) but there’s a stunt here that I think you need to be an aviationist to really appreciate. In Mission Impossible Rogue Nation, Ethan Hunter is an IMF operative who assembles a team…
Read more… 17 Jul 15
SR-71 vs F-16
What I’ve been doing when I should have been writing: Reading The Martian (highly recommend!!) Finishing the edits for the next Why Planes Crash e-book (want early access? Join the mailing list!) Working on a redesign for the website (coming soon!) Drafting two complicated accident reports (still in progress) I am sorry that I haven’t…
Read more… 3 Jul 15
Accident Analysis
Why KLM Cut the Steering Cables on Two Perfectly Functional Boeing 737s
Last month, we looked at the night of 28th of November 2004 at Barcelona Airport. KLM 1673 ran off the runway at high speed, stopping just short of a canal.…
KLM 1673 Veers Off the Runway with Full Right Rudder
On the 28th of November 2004, a Boeing B737 ran off the runway at Barcelona Airport. The weather had been good at Barcelona that evening. The flight crew agreed to land…
Demystifying
How Important is Having a Sterile Cockpit?
This question was posted to r/flying by a private pilot who wanted to know: do airline pilots ever engage in small talk about irrelevant things during taxiing, run-up, takeoff, and…
Someone has to write the TAF
It turns out that there a person sitting there deciding what the weather is going to do. Which seems obvious, except that I had somehow never asked msyelf who “someone”…
History
The CIA's Shark Screen
Today we have a guest post from the CIA! In their archives, researching something completely different, I found the answer to a question I never thought to ask. I immediately…
The First Jet to Land on an Aircraft Carrier (Deliberately)
“The Vampire was the first jet to land on a moving aircraft carrier deliberately.” This quote from Airshow Luke, our MC at the Legacy of Liberty airshow, made me almost…
Fun Stuff
Petrified, Petrified, Petrified
There’s been some interesting reporting in the UK media about a “near disaster” over Canary Wharf involving the captain having to intervene (the horror!) after air data systems failed on…
Aviation Stories You Might Have Missed
I hope you all are having a wonderful holiday season. This week, I’ve put together a compilation of interesting items in the press that you might have missed while enjoying…
