Latest Posts   –  Page 4

Chalk’s Flying Service and the Grumman Mallard

Sometimes when I am looking into the background of an accident, I keep finding more and more intriguing details, rabbit holes of interesting information, until I’m barely sure anymore what it was I wanted to know in the first place. It’s well known that commercial aviation got its start in the aftermath of the First…

Read more… 11 May 18

The Latest Futuristic and Experimental Aircraft in 1952

This week I’m going to share a great video with you which has only just come to my attention. It’s a 1952 newsreel showing the latest futuristic and experimental aircraft. The video includes the Horton Wingless Airplane, the Sky Baby, the Fulton Airphibian and the XH-17 Flying Crane. I’ve collected some more information on each…

Read more… 4 May 18

Aloha Air 243 Becomes Relevant Thirty Years Later

The 28th of April marks 30 years since Aloha Airlines flight 243 had its hull ripped open at 24,000 feet. In light of the current focus on metal fatigue and the proper maintenance of aircraft, I thought it would be interesting to look at the accident in 1988 which changed the way we looked at…

Read more… 27 Apr 18

Drone Killer

When I’m not obsessing about aviation, I write speculative fiction, including science fiction featuring near-future technology. So you can imagine I was pretty excited when I saw a headline last week that the Oceanside Police Department in California has recently acquired a Drone Killer. I had visions of The Terminator but it turns out that…

Read more… 20 Apr 18

$10,000 Reward for Aircraft Mechanic

This week, the FBI announced a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of a man who once worked as a mechanic at SabreTech, the airline maintenance company at the centre of the tragic loss of ValuJet flight 592, which crashed into the Florida Everglades on the 11th of May 1996. It’s not often…

Read more… 13 Apr 18

Land Like a Crow part 2

Last week, I covered the sequence of events that led to a Boeing 767-300 ER wheels-up landing at Warsaw airport. A hydraulic hose connecting the hydraulic system on the right leg of the main landing gear failed as they departed Newark. The flight crew decided to continue to Warsaw but once there, they found that…

Read more… 6 Apr 18

Accident Reports

Runway Not In Sight at Princess Juliana International

Princess Juliana International Airport handles only about 60,000 aircraft movements a year (compared to almost 500,000 at Heathrow) but it is renowned the world over because of its layout. One…

MH370 Report: Additional Factors and No Answers

This is a continuation of my analysis of the Malaysian Safety Investigation Report. Last week we looked at the flight details of Malaysia Airlines flight 370, with a focus on…

Demystifying

Thirty Years Since Air France Flight 296

Thirty years ago, on the 26th of June 1988, a brand new Airbus A320 crashed during a demonstration of its fly-by-wire capabilities, killing three passengers and demolishing the plane as…

Crash in the Desert (Controlled Impact Demonstration)

This post started, as so many of them do, with a seemingly unbelieveable photograph with no attribution information. It didn’t take long to find a Reddit thread discussing the photograph…

History

Goddamned Cat

Sometimes the best stories are the ones that aren’t so famous, where the race was not won and the record was not broken. This is such a story. It’s the…

The Story of the Avro Lancaster LM650 KM-T

I became interested in this story last year, when a reader named Niall left a comment about this rather odd item for sale on Ebay: What was the story of…

Fun Stuff

For your amusement: weird and interesting NOTAMS

I was browsing around looking for interesting news when I saw that Reddit user justachamelion had posted a great question for /r/AskReddit: Pilots of Reddit, what are the weirdest or…

In case you were wondering what to get me for Christmas

There are lots of private jets up for sale but this one is special… It is a 1962 Lockheed JetStar 1329. The JetStar was a private project at Lockheed, originally…