Latest Posts – Page 24
Ten Years Since the Disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight 370
This week’s guest post is not actually here. It’s over at the Guardian: MH370: one of aviation’s biggest mysteries remains unsolved 10 years on by Oliver Holmes. I first spoke to Oliver a few years back when he was writing a different piece on the loss of Malaysia Airlines 370, and I was impressed with…
Read more… 8 Mar 24
The Fatal Flight Instruction: Spiral Dive Technique
A reader contacted me about a fatal crash which killed a pilot and his instructor in November 2021. The reader had some specific questions, which I answered as best I could. However, a few aspects aren’t that clear cut, so I told him I would post it to Fear of Landing and see what other…
Read more… 1 Mar 24
A Brief Word About Icelandic Aviation
Aviation in Iceland started with an airline, not an aircraft. Flugfélag Íslands, the first Icelandic airline, was founded in Reykjavík on the 22nd of March 1919. They did not (yet) have an aeroplane. This was just a few weeks after William Boeing had a C-700 built for himself to explore the exciting new prospect of…
Read more… 23 Feb 24
The Missing Bolts from Alaska Airlines flight 1282
On the 5th of January 2024, Alaska Airlines flight 1282 had just taken off when it lost a door plug, leaving a gaping hole on the left side of row 26. I wrote about the incident that week. The NTSB released a four-minute video of the investigators on the aircraft and I found it interesting…
Read more… 16 Feb 24
Off-roading at Vilnius
On the 3rd of February 2024, an Airbus A320-200, registered in Lithuania as LY-NVL, departed the runway upon landing at Vilnius, Lithuania. This was an Avion Express flight, an operator based in Vilnius that offers seasonal flights to Egypt and performs charter flights for tour operators. Flight NVD8242 was a chartered passenger flight from Milan,…
Read more… 9 Feb 24
Pilot and ATP student commits suicide using Cessna 172
On the 24th of January 2024, a brand new Cessna 172 was stolen from ATP Flight School in Addison, Texas, and deliberately crashed, killing the pilot who was the only occupant. ATP Flight School claims to be the largest commercial pilot flight academy in the US. ATP offers airline-oriented flight training and is said to…
Read more… 2 Feb 24
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…
