Latest Posts – Page 10
It’s clear, but just barely: Ground collision at Seattle
There was light snow and congestion on the morning at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on the 5th of February 2025. Visibility was good but the temperatures hovered just above freezing and the ramp was slippery with a mix of light snowfall and de-icing fluid. Delta Airlines flight 1921 was a Boeing 737-832 registered in the US…
Read more… 17 Oct 25
Durga Puja Pandal Shows Air India Flight 171 Crash
The following video from a religious festival in West Bengal, India, has caught a lot of social media attention. It shows a detailed representation of an Air India Boeing Dreamliner crash into a residential building, clearly meant to depict the fatal crash of Air India flight 171. The passenger flight crashed into the hostel block…
Read more… 10 Oct 25
“A Group of Pissed Off Hornets”: An Instructor’s Snapchat Story of a Fatal Flight
I don’t like to be negative about flight instructors; it’s a difficult job that usually pays badly and requires superhuman levels of focus and patience. I had two amazing instructors who very much loved flying and were excited to share their passion with me. But of course the fatal accidents caused by bad instructors are…
Read more… 3 Oct 25
Pilots or Toilets: Is This Viral ATC Audio Real?
There’s a YouTube video by ATC Audio making the rounds with a shocking title: She says Both Pilots INOPERATIVE. Real ATC Audio. The video claims to have real ATC audio of Tap Air Portugal flight TAP484H, a scheduled passenger flight from Lisbon, Portugal to Nice, France. The audio covers an aviation miscommunication which led to…
Read more… 26 Sep 25
The Mystery of the Caged Tyres and the Porcupine Who Flew Home
This photograph was posted to r/shittyaskflying, a subreddit dedicated to asking silly questions and giving silly answers. In this case, the photograph is enough to make one wonder what’s going on. The caption reads: Why all the wheel chocks? Strong winds? The answers are predictably hilarious. No_Mathematician2527 writes: Stops porcupine from chewing the tires. Why…
Read more… 19 Sep 25
Best Speed across the Runway: VH-EWW at Gold Coast Airport
On the 6th of February 2024, a student pilot and instructor met at Gold Coast Airport in Queensland for a dual training flight. The clear lesson learned that day was a common one: if the approach is not stabilised, go around! But to be fair, the instructor did go around, just …a little bit later…
Read more… 12 Sep 25
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…
