On Sunday, the 27th of November 2022, a single-engine aircraft made national US news when it crashed through power lines in Gaithersburg, Maryland, coming to rest on a lattice tower. The aircraft was a Mooney M20J 201, a popular fast aircraft whose designation of “201” is based on 201 miles per hour: the J model’s…
Read more… 2 Dec 22
On the 11th of November 2018, an Air Astana aircraft departed from Alverca airbase in Portugal as Air Astana flight KC1833, after undergoing heavy maintenance. The aircraft was an Embraer E190-100LR registered in Aruba as P4-KCJ. This was a positioning flight from Alverca (LPAR), where the maintenance had been done, to Minsk (UUMS). There were…
Read more… 25 Nov 22
This heartbreaking video is from the tragic midair collision at Wings Over Dallas. The Boeing B-17, known as the Flying Fortress, is a World War II bomber designed by Boeing in response to a US Air Corps interest in a multi-engine bomber which could carry a “useful bombload at 10,000 feet for ten hours with…
Read more… 18 Nov 22
I hope you are sitting comfortably because this week I have some extraordinary articles to fill your weekend. These are my favourite aviation-related pieces that I’ve read lately. I found them all fascinating and I’m sure you will too. This man went to the scene of a Boeing crash in 1959 but didn’t think to…
Read more… 11 Nov 22
On the 15th of July 2022, an officer of the Missouri State Highway Patrol arrested a man for driving while intoxicated on the westbound Interstate 70 at 3 in the morning. This is relevant to us because the man was “driving” a single-engine aircraft, a Piper Warrior II. The Piper Warrior was a popular successor…
Read more… 4 Nov 22
Yesterday, the 27th of October 2022, a tragic crash of a firefighting aircraft was caught on film in Italy. The aircraft was a Canadair CL-215-6B11, generally referred to as a CL-415, registered in Italy as I-DPCN. The Canadair CL-415 is a variant of the CL-215, a type of amphibious aircraft designed and built by Canadair.…
Read more… 28 Oct 22
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.…
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”…
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…
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…