Category: Miscellaneous – Page 25
Flying in France
One of the common routes that we fly is between South-east England, where we both have friends and family to Málaga, near our home here on the South Coast of Spain. We have it down to a fine art as we’ve done the run so often, the planning almost takes care of itself. We generally…
Read more… 11 Jul 08
Landing in Lausanne
To prepare for our trip to Switzerland, I flew with the Saratoga to Andrewsfield, a small airfield near Stansted in Essex that I’d not been to before. Andrewsfield was built by the Americans in World War 2 and is one of the few airfields around London which will allow for unlimited circuits – as long…
Read more… 7 Jun 08
Dinner in Djemaa
“Head towards the mosque,” seems to be the start of all directions in Marrakesh. Even if you don’t ask for directions, they point you that way, telling you that you should go to the square. The Koutoubia mosque and the Djemaa el Fna square are the centre of the world. During the day, the centre…
Read more… 12 Apr 08
Update from Abroad
Just a quick update to say we had a wonderful time at Birling Gap – my mother and my son both loved it, much to my relief. The weather was IFR (in fact, we arrived a day later than initially planned to wait out a storm) but the South Downs still look beautiful in rain…
Read more… 23 Mar 08
Birling Gap
Barely home again before it’s time to go. Assuming the weather plays along, we’ll be taking the Saratoga out for an extended trip. We were initially planning an initial stop (well, if you don’t count refuelling) in Dublin, where my mother is at a conference. But having been away last weekend, things have backed up…
Read more… 13 Mar 08
Enter the Cockpit
This is very cool. A 360 degree view of the A380 flight deck that allows you to swivel the camera around. I’ve only seen this sort of view of hotel rooms before – where it always struck me as a bit wasted. There’s the sofa, there’s the bed – the 360 view doesn’t really offer…
Read more… 18 Feb 08
Accident Analysis
The Anatomy of an A350–CRJ Collision at Atlanta
On the 10th of September 2024, an Airbus A350 took the tail off of a Bombardier CRJ at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Georgia, USA. Delta Air Lines flight 295…
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.…
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
Bird Strikes, Balloon Landings and Falling in Love with a Boeing 777
The exciting news on Fear of Landing this week was a huge scare about critical vulnerabilities in PHP. PHP is widely used on the web, including in WordPress, which is…
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…
