Latest Posts – Page 148
All I Need is the Air that I Breathe
One question I didn’t deal with in my Frequently Asked Questions was whether the Saratoga has oxygen. The plane does have an oxygen tank and you can plug masks in on the ceiling to take it in directly. We’ve never used the supplemental oxygen other than to test to make sure it’s really there. The…
Read more… 6 Nov 09
I Think I Came Down With A Viral
Hello there! It seems I wasn’t the only one who thought that the bear-attack-and-repair photographs were pretty cool. Traffic to that one page over the past three days has been as much as I usually get to the site over three months. Neat! And even better, you guys seem to be the chatty type. I…
Read more… 2 Nov 09
FAA Approved?
If you like reading about plane crashes and investigations, why not take a look at my ebook series, Why Planes Crash. It’s full of explanations and photographs of 21st century aviation incidents. I think you’ll find it interesting. I found this on an aviation forum and I just can’t stop staring at the photographs. N9368D…
Read more… 30 Oct 09
Frequently Asked Questions
Not all of these questions are really all that frequent, if I’m honest with you. Most of them are more like occasionally asked questions. Or in the case of the last question: asked once, by my mother. Nevertheless, I will endeavour to answer them all. How many people can you fit into your plane? The…
Read more… 23 Oct 09
Security
Today’s xkcd made me break out with a smile before I’d even finished my first coffee: As with all of the xkcd comics, be sure to hover your mouse over the image for a further comment from the author. For more intriguing views of the world we live in, visit xkcd.com.
Read more… 19 Oct 09
Short Circuit
It’s been a while since the day I missed the runway at Oxford Airport. I’ve done a lot more flying and I’m a lot more competent. But my first near-miss (no damage was done except the loss of a runway light) is not an incident I’m likely to forget in a hurry. The Saratoga is…
Read more… 16 Oct 09
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…
