Latest Posts – Page 145
Why You Should Follow Me on Twitter
I spent last week in England, hoping to get a chance to fly the Saratoga and get current with my take-off and landings. The one day that the plane was not available was Tuesday. That was, of course, the only sunny day of the week. The rest of my time in England was spent watching…
Read more… 5 Feb 10
Flying Wings Photography (Andreas Zeitler)
Andreas Zeitler is a German aviation professional who runs a website dedicated to airshows in Europe and features his photography from all around the world. I first discovered his photographs on Airliners.net and visited his website: http://www.flying-wings.com. I was thrilled to find a lot more photographs there as well as trip reports from his visits…
Read more… 29 Jan 10
Ditching in the Irish Sea
Kate Burrows was flying from Guernsey back home to the Isle of Man in her PA30, a Comanche Twin, when she noticed problems with her right engine. She shut down the engine and, as she was still some 38 miles from the Isle of Man, she decided to divert to Blackpool. A few minutes later,…
Read more… 22 Jan 10
Haitian Relief Efforts
In lieu of a post today, here are some links regarding the situation in Haiti, with a focus on aviation. These photographs are not easy to look at but helped me to understand the scale of the devastation. Earthquake in Haiti – The Big Picture – Boston.com Tuesday afternoon, January 12th, the worst earthquake in…
Read more… 15 Jan 10
Snow on the Runway, Ice on the Wings
I was supposed to be flying to Gatwick commercially today with a certain unhappy low-cost airline but as the country is currently gripped in the worst cold snap in 100 years my trip has been cancelled. This means that I am thrilled devasted to find that I’m stuck in sunny Spain with a free day.…
Read more… 8 Jan 10
Odds of Airborne Terror (Gizmodo)
FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right: The Odds of Airborne Terror has done some interesting research: Over the past decade, there have been, by my count, six attempted terrorist incidents on board a commercial airliner than landed in or departed from the United States: the four planes that were hijacked on 9/11, the shoe bomber incident in…
Read more… 3 Jan 10
Accident Analysis
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.…
KLM 1673 Veers Off the Runway with Full Right Rudder
On the 28th of November 2004, a Boeing B737 ran off the runway at Barcelona Airport. The weather had been good at Barcelona that evening. The flight crew agreed to land…
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
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…
Aviation Stories You Might Have Missed
I hope you all are having a wonderful holiday season. This week, I’ve put together a compilation of interesting items in the press that you might have missed while enjoying…
