Latest Posts – Page 159
St. Mary’s Airfield
The first reference to flying at St. Mary’s appears to be 1917: the 34th Squadron of the Royal Navy Air Service were based at Porthmellon, including “seaplanes and flying-boats”. The first commercial service was offered in 1937: twin-engined De Havilland Dragon biplanes which used a local golf course as their landing strip. They offered a…
Read more… 8 Aug 08
Isles of Scilly
The Isles of Scilly (the locals frown upon the phrase “the Scilly Isles” for reasons that I don’t really understand) are an archipelago of 150 islands off of the Cornish coast. St Mary’s, the largest of the islands, is home to Hugh Town, the thriving centre of the Scillies, with an airport and a working…
Read more… 1 Aug 08
Flying Around the Web
Five Airports One Flight For those of us dreaming of flying the London Airports, this video of Five Airports One Flight is astounding to watch. If you are wondering how they managed it, there’s a comment by the original poster stating that “It’s not what you know, but who you know…” in terms of getting…
Read more… 25 Jul 08
Flying to Guernsey
Plastic Pilot has been planning a trip to Guernsey and I couldn’t help but remember my first flight there. This was also Anne’s first time flying with me. Here is the description I wrote at the time: It seemed such a good idea. My pilot’s licence was burning a hole in my pocket and I…
Read more… 18 Jul 08
Flying in France
One of the common routes that we fly is between South-east England, where we both have friends and family to Málaga, near our home here on the South Coast of Spain. We have it down to a fine art as we’ve done the run so often, the planning almost takes care of itself. We generally…
Read more… 11 Jul 08
Slight Thump after Take-off
After landing on Jersey, my attention was immediately taken by a plane parked near the flying school, half a wing missing. A laminated sheet was attached. Ever the voyeur for accident reports, I couldn’t resist. The pilot had noticed a slight thump shortly after taking off. He checked for anything visibly wrong inside the cockpit…
Read more… 4 Jul 08
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…
