Category: Photography

Plane vs Truck

This photograph is so remarkably perfectly timed, I thought it must be a still from an action movie or television series, done with special effects. It turns out it’s absolutely a case of impeccable photography by Mr Robert W Madden, who was at the right place at the right time and managed to frame the…

Read more… 12 Dec 14

Project Habu: Thirty SR-71 Blackbirds in Photographs

The Lockheed SR-71 has broken every speed and altitude record held by aircraft: faster than a speeding bullet and able to fly in the top 1% of our atmosphere. The jet was designed in the 1960s, at the peak of the Cold War, as a reconnaissance jet that could operate at high speeds (Mach 3.5+)…

Read more… 27 Jun 14

The Story Behind an Unbelievable Photograph

A reader mailed me this amazing aviation photograph and I knew I wanted to know more. I was surprised at how much I discovered about the photo, which at first glance I thought might be a fake. But the story of who took the photograph and how he managed to get the shot is a…

Read more… 1 Nov 13

Last Journey of the Endeavour

This week, the space shuttle Endeavour travelled across the U.S. to its final destination of Los Angeles, where it will be on display as a part of the California Science Center. The Endeavour completed 25 missions, spent 299 days in orbit and orbited the Earth 4,671 times while travelling 122,883,151 statute miles. The fleet was…

Read more… 21 Sep 12

Stunning Norwegian Scenery

In June, Christian Semcesen and the other members of his flying club in Oslo, Norway, flew 500 nautical miles from Kjeller Airport (ENKJ) to Bodø (ENBO) for an airshow. The planes: two ex-Norwegian Army Cubs, two Tiger Moths, a PT-19 Cornell and a Chipmunk, Bird Dog, a Broussard and a T-6 Texan. Christian flew the…

Read more… 3 Aug 12

Wish You Were Here (Webcam Roundup)

This video of a frozen plane was posted to reddit and made me shiver: “After a night of freezing rain, this is what we showed up to. Almost an inch of pure ice on almost every surface of the plane. Even the antennas were completely cased in ice.” It struck me because today is a…

Read more… 27 Jan 12

Accident Reports

What happened on Ethiopian flight 302: a breakdown of the preliminary report

Yesterday, the 4th of April, the Ethiopian Accident Investigation Bureau investigating the crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 released the Preliminary Report (local version stored at bottom of this post).…

The Reckless Final Approach of US Bangla Flight 211

The crash of US Bangla flight 211 made international headlines when it occurred on the 12th of March 2018; however, it wasn’t until a month ago that the true sequence…

Demystifying

What Is Going On With The Boeing 737 Max 8?

The news is dominated right now with the grounding of the Boeing 737 Max 8 after a second fatal crash of a passenger jet which could be related to the…

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…

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…