In the early hours of Wednesday the 10th of March, a fire broke out at the OVH data centre in Strasbourg. The fire started in a room in the building known as SBG2 just before 01:00 local time. All services in all four buildings (SGB1, SGB2, SGB3 and SGB4) were halted while SGB2 blazed with…
Read more… 12 Mar 21
Every year I take a look at the most popular posts of the year, by which I mean the posts most read in that year, regardless of when they were posted. Intriguingly, this year it was a number of older posts that attracted the most attention, possibly a result of the world having much more…
Read more… 1 Jan 21
It’s Christmas day and I’m taking the day off! Wishing everyone one of you all the best at the end of 2020 (thank goodness!) and hoping for a much improved 2021! Here are some pieces I found online, just because I can’t bear to leave you without something to read: A B-17 deployed to drop…
Read more… 25 Dec 20
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
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
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
Last week I wrote about the Fokker F27 mk 500 Friendship that came off the runway at take-off at Bournemouth Airport. Rudy commented on his experience flying the F27 in…
The flight crew reported for duty at Bournemouth Airport at 3am on Friday the 7th of May 2004. They were flying a thirty-three-year-old Fokker F27 Mark 500, registered in the…
This is not an article that I ever thought I would feel compelled to write! However, given the confusion over a photograph chosen in a regional English paper, apparently it’s…
There are a number of reasons why you might need to quickly point out the differences between a General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon and a Eurofighter EF2000 Typhoon. You might…
This video of a mid-air wheel exchange goes viral once a year or so, but I never get tired of watching it. Last week, it showed up on Reddit and…
This week, we have a guest post by J.B. Rivard who wrote an article for the American Aviation Historical Society (AAHS) and used one of my articles as a reference.…
It seems a good time for something a bit more lighthearted. After weeks of analyzing serious incidents and technical failures, I thought I could a moment to appreciate aviation humuor…
I’m going to admit that I’m not a great fan of April Fools’ pranks, especially not attempts to trick people into believing something and then pulling the rug out from…