I totally lost control of my week! I had no idea it was Friday and now it’s the end of the day and I am out of time to write an interesting post for you. So I am giving you permission to play a game. Spend the time you would have wasted reading my ramblings…
Read more… 9 Oct 09
This week: A selection of aviation articles and images that I found intriguing. Bird strike! The moment 200 starlings were sucked into passenger jet engine on take-off | Mail Online ‘It was like a scene from the Hitchcock movie The Birds. One second all was clear, and the next thing you saw were these birds…
Read more… 2 Oct 09
I shouldn’t have hopped the fence. It was shut with a big padlock and surrounded by barbed wire so I can’t exactly claim that I hadn’t noticed it. But I’d walked such a long way – 5 miles! – just to take some photographs for my blog, it seemed such a shame to give up…
Read more… 25 Sep 09
The 13th of September was a Fly-In and Community Day at North Weald in Essex and I had the good fortune to be in the area. The airshow featured F16 Fighters of 132 Wing Royal Norwegian Air Force, who flew in from their base at Bodø, north of the Arctic Circle. They returned to the…
Read more… 18 Sep 09
Our route for Sunday was simple: Málaga to Shoreham with a stop to refuel in Périgueux-Bassillac in France. We’ve been using Périgueux as a refuelling stop for a while now: the people are friendly and there’s never a queue for the pumps and so we get a fast turnaround. I noted that I didn’t have…
Read more… 11 Sep 09
Summer is officially over: it’s time for Connor to go back to school. I hate September even more now than I did when I was a kid! We’ll be heading off in the Saratoga on Sunday morning, taking off from Málaga (IFR as it’s the weekend) and flying 3.5 hours to in France. Just a…
Read more… 4 Sep 09
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…
Social Media Influencers Weigh Down Aircraft
The fatal crash at Scottsdale Arizona took place directly after take-off. The passengers were a self-proclaimed crowd of social media influencers. The jet-setting influencer who had organised the flight, had…
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”…
The Pilots, the Probes, and the AF447 Verdict
On the 21st of May 2026, the Paris Court of Appeal convicted Airbus and Air France of involuntary manslaughter for their roles in the crash of Air France flight 447,…
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…
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…