Latest Posts – Page 157
£50 Cake
It’s disappointing. I had this great idea of flying to various little airfields and compiling a list of the best cakes in southern England. Enstone usually has slices of home-made carrot cake on the counter (next to a tin where you drop in your coins) and North Weald have a coffee shop with the cake-of-the-day…
Read more… 11 Feb 08
Photographing Not Flying
This is a bit of an odd one – I need photographs of “not flying” to go with an article where I complain a lot about winter weather and being grounded. I’ve put together a collection of photographs of rain, cloud and fog: Help me out by telling me which ones you like best. If…
Read more… 3 Feb 08
Cambridge
I was just pondering whether I had anything to write about when I got a research question as a comment – how exciting! Sex Scenes at Starbucks is a speculative fiction writer living in Colorado. She is working on a novel which includes a scene with a jet flying out of Cambridge. She asked me…
Read more… 1 Feb 08
Now that’s what I call a cruise!
Forget the Queen Mary, I want to go cruising on one of these: The brainchild of Jean-Marie Massaud, the Manned Cloud is an airborne hotel that he hopes will change the way we view tourism. Manned Cloud is a hotel with a capacity of 40 passengers and staffed with 15 persons, that on a 3-day…
Read more… 23 Jan 08
Crash-landing at Heathrow : Just the Facts, Please
There is a lot of speculation going on in the press and, worse, a lot of speculation being presented as fact. The words “Absolute nonsense!” have become a frequent sound in our household as we read the articles in the popular press. I know accident reports aren’t everyone’s thing, but in the interests of understanding…
Read more… 19 Jan 08
The South Downs
Cliff and I had an appointment in Eastbourne, an English resort city right on the South Downs. As always, we arranged to arrive early, so that a delayed or cancelled flight wouldn’t mean chaos. We flew from Málaga to Shoreham via Bordeaux in a single day, so we ended up with plenty of time to…
Read more… 8 Jan 08
Accident Reports
Any Landing You Can Float Away From: Successful Ditching in the Arctic
On the 29th of July 2024, a light aircraft encountered engine trouble off the coast of Greenland and was forced to ditch in the North Atlantic. The aircraft was a…
Bomber 139's Third Run: What the Investigation Found
In order to follow this analysis, you’ll need to have the details of the flight and the crash from last week’s article about the flight. When we last saw Bomber…
Demystifying
Another quick round of questions and answers
It’s time for another Questions and Answers session. I started this series a few years back, when a reader asked if there was a way to pose aviation questions outside…
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…
History
Four Point Two Stars Where You Only Stop If You Have To
I always look up airports when I’m writing about them, partly out of habit and partly because I’m afraid I’ll miss an important detail. When I was writing Any Landing…
Gladys Ingle Inflight Wheel Change: Emergency Action or Stunt?
This video of a mid-air wheel exchange goes viral once a year or so, but I never get tired of watching it. Last week, it showed up on Reddit and…
Fun Stuff
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…
Nathan Pyle Strange Worlds
Thank you so much for all the kind words. I don’t quite have the wherewithal to respond to each of you individually but I very much appreciate all of you…
