Latest Posts – Page 25
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 sea at night and no investigation?. Initially, the Norwegian authorities dismissed the idea that the incident required official attention. Only after significant pressure from…
Read more… 10 Nov 23
Archie League Medal of Safety – President’s Award 2023
The 19th Annual Archie League Medal of Safety Awards ceremony took place in Las Vegas, Nevada on the 20th of September. The Archie League Medal is an annual event by the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) in the US. This year, the awards presentations took place at the Communicating for Safety Conference and the…
Read more… 3 Nov 23
I am not OK: Horizon Air flight 2059
On Sunday, the 22nd of October, Horizon Air flight 2059 was on a scheduled passenger flight from Everett in Washington to San Francisco, California. The aircraft was a four-year-old Embraer ERJ-175. The flight was full, with eighty passengers, two flight crew and two cabin crew on board. One of the passengers was an off-duty pilot…
Read more… 27 Oct 23
Night Flying (PPL)
I’ll be in Switzerland all week, hoping that the weather is good enough for the AXALP 2023 airshow. To tide you over, I thought it might be fun to revisit an old piece that I wrote about learning to fly at night. Maybe it will shed some light on the recent night-flying posts. This was…
Read more… 15 Oct 23
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 survived. The aircraft was a McDonnell Douglas MD-81. The MD-81 is the longer variant of the MD-80: a five-abreast single-aisle airliner designed as the second-generation…
Read more… 13 Oct 23
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 hole effect. Understanding our position, motion and attitude is critical to safe flight. Spatial disorientation is a collection of sensory illusions which lead us to…
Read more… 6 Oct 23
Accident Analysis
Fatal SR22 Stall on Final at Barwick LaFayette
On the 20th of March, 2025, a Cirrus SR22 crashed in LaFayette, Georgia during an instructional flight, killing both the pilot and the flight instructor. It was a good flying…
There Is a Parachutist in Front of You
On the 15th of June 2023, a light aircraft crashed into the runway at Aversi private airfield in Denmark. The aircraft, registered in Germany as D-EPRR, was a Cessna TU206G…
Demystifying
The Pilots, the Probes, and the AF447 Verdict
On the 21st of May 2026, the Paris Court of Appeal convicted Airbus and Air France of involuntary manslaughter for their roles in the crash of Air France flight 447,…
Meowing on Guard (an attempt at an explanation)
Last week a video went viral and it’s been fun to see the mainstream media coverage try to cover two pilots who were heard making animal noises on the radio. …
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
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…
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…
