Category: Miscellaneous

COVID-19 Effects on Aviation

It’s hard to have a conversation about anything but the Coronavirus at the moment. There is so much information and misinformation being shared right now. It reminds me of the situation directly after a commercial crash, where everyone desperately wants to know what happened and why, even though not a lot of solid information is…

Read more… 13 Mar 20

Seasonal Greetings from Fear of Landing

I’m pretty sure it’s a tradition now that I get the Friday before Christmas off. At least, I hope so, because I’ve got some kind of horrible sniffly-sneezy-coughing-possibly-dying thing and I just do not have enough brain to finish the piece I have been working on. So I’m going back to bed and feeling sorry…

Read more… 20 Dec 19

Some Jokes Are Not That Funny

I originally saw the headline on BBC news: Southwest Airlines pilots livestreamed plane toilet on hidden camera. A Southwest Airlines flight attendant has filed a lawsuit accusing two pilots of livestreaming a plane’s toilet on hidden camera. The cabin crew member had been asked to the flight deck while the captain used the lavatory, standard…

Read more… 8 Nov 19

We’re Still Talking about the 737 Max 8

The entire aviation world is focused on the Boeing 737 Max 8, especially as the details from the Lion Air cockpit voice recorder files have been leaked. The truth is, I don’t have a lot to say about it at this stage (unlike me to keep quiet, I know!) and so instead, I’ve put together…

Read more… 22 Mar 19

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

Accident Reports

Part 2: The Analysis of Southern Airways flight 932

This is a continuation from my post last week on the crash of Southern Airways flight 932. In that post, I stepped through the sequence of events which led to…

The Crash of Southern Airways flight 932

On the 14th of November in 1970, a McDonnell Douglas DC-9 crashed on final approach to the Huntington Tri-State airport in West Virginia, killing all 75 on board. The aircraft…

Demystifying

Aviation Airspeed Guide

Just a quick one today but I really liked this guide to the airspeed indicator which was published to r/aviation. The thread has ended up in an interesting discussion about…

What To Do In Case Of An Electrical Failure

NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) have an interesting series in Callback, in which they publish the first half of a story, based on ASRS reports, to the point where…

History

Flight 19: The Point of No Return

I was interviewed about Flight 19 for a documentary recently and although I’ve limited the details of the experience to supporters of my personal Patreon (for travel writing and essays),…

Wingless Flight in the M2-F1

Sometimes, the most interesting aircraft are the experimental ones that barely made it off the ground. Sometimes the most intriguing stories come out of things I don’t understand. ​ I…

Fun Stuff

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…

Top Ten Posts of 2019

Next week we’ll be starting on a detailed look at Lion Air flight 610 but first, to celebrate the end of 2019, I want to share the most popular posts…