Latest Posts – Page 120
The Helicopter and the Crane
London helicopter crash pilot ‘distracted by radio’ – London – News – London Evening Standard Mr Barnes, 50, from Berkshire, died when the AgustaWestland 109 he was piloting crashed into a crane at the side of The Tower at St George Wharf at 8am on Wednesday, just yards from Vauxhall Station. His helicopter plunged to…
Read more… 18 Jan 13
Top Accidents and Stories in 2012
Every year, I post 52 pieces of content on the blog. Most of them are written by me, although I enjoy having guest posts too, and every subject is chosen by me. The categories align closely to what I’m interested in at any given moment but I also spend a lot of time thinking about…
Read more… 11 Jan 13
We’re still at 2,000 feet, right? Eastern Air Lines Flight 401
Forty years ago on the 29th of December in 1972, Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 crashed into the Florida Everglades. It was an uneventful flight from JFK until shortly before they were at the approach at Miami Airport. When the flight-crew lowered the landing gear, they did not receive confirmation that the nose wheel was…
Read more… 4 Jan 13
Audiobook: You Fly Like a Woman
Over the past few months, one of my goals was to make You Fly Like a Woman available in as many formats as possible. I originally launched the book on Amazon in Kindle format, yet quite a few people asked me if they could buy a copy in PDF or ePub format instead. The answer…
Read more… 28 Dec 12
Wonderful Airport Welcomes to Make You Sing
I’m terribly busy drinking mulled wine and making Christmas cookies but luckily Baltic Aviation Academy has risen to the challenge of supplying this week’s post. I hope you enjoy their wonderful collection of airport welcomes as much as I have. Thank you, Aviation, for Bringing the World Together At this time of the year airports…
Read more… 21 Dec 12
Why do aircraft still have ashtrays in the lavatory?
We’ve all seen this in the toilets of commercial aircraft: a large no-smoking sign with a plainly marked ashtray underneath. Obviously airlines who allow in-flight smoking have ashtrays as a part of the standard model. But are there any of those left? The US banned smoking on domestic flights in 1990 and soon followed up…
Read more… 14 Dec 12
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…
