Latest Posts   –  Page 20

Lion Air flight 610: In the Cockpit

On the 29th of October 2018, Lion Air flight 610, a Boeing 737-8 (MAX) crashed at Tanjung Karawang, West Java after departing from Jakarta. This crash was the first public sign that there was something wrong with the Boeing 737-MAX; the initial domino in a cascading sequence of events that uncovered an unbelievable quagmire of…

Read more… 24 Sep 21

Maintaining Focus in the Cockpit

This article by Key Dismukes, Grant Young and Robert Sumwait is based on their research at NASA to study the problem of crew preoccupation. They reviewed NTSB reports of accidents attributed to crew error and concluded that nearly half of them involved lapses of attention associated with interruptions, distractions, or preoccupation with one task to…

Read more… 17 Sep 21

Crash at Pensacola: “I wasn’t ridiculously low”

On Tuesday the 13th of August 2019, a Cessna 172 Skyhawk, registration N84287 crashed into a sand bar on the Escambia River near Jay, Florida, near the Alabama border. The pilot held both commercial pilot and flight instructor certificates with over 1,000 hours flight time, 798 hours in the aircraft make and model. The aircraft…

Read more… 10 Sep 21

VSS Unity: Trajectory Deviation at Mach 3

On the 11th of July 2021, Virgin Galactic’s space vessel, VSS Unity, was launched from the Spaceport American facility near Truth or Consequences in New Mexico, which I have to admit sounds more like a Hunter S. Thompson novel than a real place. There were two pilots and four passengers on board, including company founder,…

Read more… 3 Sep 21

A Little Bit of Everything

There’s so much great aviation writing and video out there and I’m always appreciative when people send me fun things; it seems a shame not to share them! So here’s a collection of pieces that caught my eye this month. My Favorite Aunt Nancy (FAN) sent me this one about the tragic end of the…

Read more… 27 Aug 21

The Mount Erebus Disaster

On the 28th of November 1979, a sight-seeing flight to Antartica crashed into Mount Erebus, killing all 257 on board. The Mount Erebus Disaster, as it came to be known, is famous not just for the tragic accident, New Zealand’s worst peacetime disaster, but also because the final accident report’s conclusion was overturned within a…

Read more… 20 Aug 21

Accident Reports

Unravelling the 2010 Widerøe incident at Svolvær

You may remember this 2010 incident from Aviation Herald’s great reporting which led to international attention to the case. I wrote about Aviation Herald’s work on this in: 83ft above…

The Illusion of a Perfect Landing

On the 6th of February 2010, at about half past four in the afternoon, an SAS flight took off from Copenhagen Airport for a short flight to France. Amazingly, everyone…

Demystifying

Descending into Illusion: The Black Hole Effect

With no moon or city lights to guide you, the runway lights up ahead should be a beacon of safety. However, it might be a trap known as the black…

Sharing a Runway: Fed Ex vs Southwest at Austin

On Monday, two commercial aircraft had a near-miss on the runway at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Texas. The airport at Austin has two parallel concrete runways which run north-to-south: 18L/36R…

History

The Wright brothers and the dream of flying

I’ve lost most of the day to unexpected research and one of the fascinating items that I discovered was the Air Force Historical Research Agency and their amazing photo collection.…

The Tragic Story of Submarine M-200 Myest

On the 21st of November 1956, the M-200 Myest (Месть, meaning vengeance or revenge) collided with a Russian destroyer and sunk to the bottom of the Baltic. The M-200 Myest…

Fun Stuff

A Few Good Stories

I’m in Dresden at the moment and I’m afraid I haven’t had a free moment to write you a new article. Luckily, lots of other people are on the internet…

Flying Fails and Airshow Considerations

Long-term readings of Fear of Landing know that my favourite aerobatics show of all time is Kyle Franklin’s Ben Whabnoski Comedy act. Just in case some of you haven’t seen…