Category: History – Page 9
The Amazing Story of the B-17 Flying Fortress
The 398th was a B-17 bomb group in the 8th Air Force 1st Air Division during World War II. The US Eighth Air Force was the largest of the Army Air Forces, engaged in heavy bombing of enemy targets in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress was a four-engine heavy…
Read more… 15 Jul 11
15 Years since ValuJet Flight 592
It’s been 15 years since the famous ValuJet crashed into the Everglades, a tragic accident that did much to focus our views on cost-savings and in-flight safety. There’s been a lot of discussion of the flight, including a National Geographic Seconds From Disaster episode. On the 11th of May in 1996, ValuJet Flight 592 disappeared.…
Read more… 13 May 11
The Gimli Glider
On the 23rd of July 1983, Air Canada Flight 143 ran out of fuel at FL410 – 26,000 feet halfway through a 2,829 kilometre (1,768 mile) flight from Montreal to Edmonton. The Boeing 767-200 carrying 61 passengers managed to glide to safety to the Gimli Industrial Park Airport in Manitoba, a Canadian prairie province. What…
Read more… 23 Jul 10
The Raisin Bombers of Berlin
Last week, Aviatrix linked to a gallery of photographs in in the Berliner Morgenpost of an emergency landing. You can see all the photographs at full size at Rosinenbomber muss notlanden – Berlin Aktuell – Berliner Morgenpost. The initial photographs in the set were taken by Frank Wandrei and Stefan Schurwanz who were taking photographs…
Read more… 9 Jul 10
D. B. Cooper
The other day, Paul Tocknell from Ask a CFI.com made a throw-away comment on Twitter: Just learned about the D.B. Cooper story. Crazy. As I am easily distracted, I wandered off to find out who D.B. Cooper was and spent the rest of the day reading about the only unsolved hijacking case in the US.…
Read more… 31 Jul 09
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…