Category: Military

Fantastic Video of Russian Air Force Combat Aircraft

This is a fantastic video showing the Russian air force aircraft currently in use (well, at least the ones that it is OK for us to know about, right?). Brilliantly edited, I dropped everything I was doing just to sit and watch this: The Russian Defense Ministry published the video to celebrate Russian Aerospace Force…

Read more… 26 Aug 16

The most expensive plane in the world

I’m away on holiday (Cuba!!) at the moment. Luckily, Tatiana has volunteered to write another post based on photographs logged in Picryl, where she works. Her last post was fascinating so I’m excited to see what she’s sharing with us this week! Northrop B-2 Spirit Bomber is the most expensive flying machine in the world,…

Read more… 14 Aug 16

Disaster at the Air Show

ONE OF THE MOST tragic accidents in recent history is hard to reach concrete conclusions about because there are no published investigation results and no final report to be read. The accident took place at Sknyliv Airport, near Lviv in the Ukraine, in July 2002. Fourteen years later, the local community has still not recovered.…

Read more… 5 Aug 16

Another Unsolved Mystery: The Kinross Incident

The Kinross Incident is a famous aviation accident which many still believe shows proof of an extraterrestrial encounter. The story unfolds in late November in 1953 over the Great Lakes. The Air Defense Command was activated in 1946 to offer air warning and air defence for the continental United States. The plan was to extend…

Read more… 3 Jun 16

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

The Remarkable Life of Erich Warsitz

I’ve lost half the week reading The First Jet Pilot, a historical biography about a pilot I’d never heard of before: Captain Erich Warsitz. Erich Warsitz was a German test-pilot in the 1930s and 40s. He lived the most amazing life and when I say test-pilot, I don’t mean “check out this probably-stable plane and…

Read more… 9 Sep 11

Accident Reports

Runway Not In Sight at Princess Juliana International

Princess Juliana International Airport handles only about 60,000 aircraft movements a year (compared to almost 500,000 at Heathrow) but it is renowned the world over because of its layout. One…

MH370 Report: Additional Factors and No Answers

This is a continuation of my analysis of the Malaysian Safety Investigation Report. Last week we looked at the flight details of Malaysia Airlines flight 370, with a focus on…

Demystifying

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…

Drone Killer

When I’m not obsessing about aviation, I write speculative fiction, including science fiction featuring near-future technology. So you can imagine I was pretty excited when I saw a headline last…

History

Chalk's Flying Service and the Grumman Mallard

Sometimes when I am looking into the background of an accident, I keep finding more and more intriguing details, rabbit holes of interesting information, until I’m barely sure anymore what…

Goddamned Cat

Sometimes the best stories are the ones that aren’t so famous, where the race was not won and the record was not broken. This is such a story. It’s the…

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…