Category: Miscellaneous

Amazing Alpine Rescue

On the 2nd of January, a group of experienced skiers were at the Anterne pass, in the Giffre massif mountain range in the Haute-Savoie region of the Alps in eastern France. Bruno, a 19-year-old experienced skier, injured his knee on the slope of a steep mountain above cloud level, at 7,400 feet. Nicolas Derely, who…

Read more… 11 Jan 19

Rudy’s Operation Overlord

In response to popular demand, here is a guest post from Rudy Jakma. Rudy is a rare breed: an old, bold pilot who is still here to tell the tale. I asked him for some personal details to write a quick introduction and his response was too good to cut down. I’ve added it at…

Read more… 2 Mar 18

The Most Popular Posts of 2017

Happy New Year! Well, almost! I’m very much looking forward to 2018 which should have a lot of exciting projects. One thing that I think you will be interested in is that the first volume of Without a Trace is coming out on the 8th of March, the culmination of over a year’s work exploring…

Read more… 29 Dec 17

How Much Runway is Too Much?

I have the flu and so I’ve decided that this week, you should write Fear of Landing’s Friday post for me. This video has caused a lot of discussion on aviation forums and I’d love to know what you think. The video is slow to start as it starts at the stand, so I’ve skipped…

Read more… 20 Oct 17

Amazing Stories To Read

I hope you are sitting comfortably because this week I have some fantastic articles for you to sink your teeth into. One of the perks of Fear of Landing is that I have amazing people who send me articles and essays that they found interesting, so I get a lot of really good content. I’d…

Read more… 22 Sep 17

Paris Air Show 2017

The Paris Air Show is the commercial aviation event of 2017 and last week it hosted some great flying as well as interesting news and press releases. #Bourget2017 jour 5: venez échanger avec nos équipes #RH sur notre stand à l'@AviondesMetiers #PAS2017 #ThalesNow pic.twitter.com/oll8oiUsm4 — Thales France (@thalesjobs) June 23, 2017 I’ve been following the…

Read more… 23 Jun 17

Accident Reports

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…

The Pilot Turned Back: Engine Failure Leads to Fatal Crash

On the 26th of July a single-engine light aircraft crashed in the woods near Colbert, Oklahoma while attempting a forced landing. The pilot had reported his emergency ten minutes earlier…

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

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…