Latest Posts   –  Page 4

Supersonic Shockwave Interactions

These photographs are from last March but they’ve just been featured in Nature magazine’s collection of the best science images of the year NASA has been exploring the potential of photographic technology resulting in these beautiful air-to-air photographs of supersonic aircraft and how their shockwaves interact. Two T-38 Talon twinjet supersonic jet trainers were flown…

Read more… 24 Jan 20

Shoot Down of Ukraine International Airlines flight 752

On Wednesday the 8th of January 2020, Ukraine International Airlines flight 752, a scheduled passenger flight from Tehran to Kiev, suffered a catastrophic failure directly after take-off. The aircraft was a Boeing 737-800 registration UR-PSR with 167 passengers and nine crew members on board. The aircraft departed Imam Khomeini International Airport on runway 29R at…

Read more… 17 Jan 20

Bek Air flight 2100 Crash After Take Off

On the 27th of December 2019, Bek Air flight 2100, a domestic passenger flight with 93 passengers and 5 crew on board, crashed after departure from Kazakhstan’s Almaty International airport. The aircraft, a 25-year-old Fokker 100, broke into pieces after crashing into a building, leading to 12 fatalities, including the captain, and 65 people with…

Read more… 10 Jan 20

Lionair flight 610 : The Maintenance

One of the aspects of Lion Air flight 610 has been the quality of the maintenance. It is clear, now, that intermittent problems related to the air data system had been logged and clearly had not been resolved in a satisfactory manner. I have been wanting to do a deeper analysis of the various aspects…

Read more… 3 Jan 20

Top Ten Posts of 2019

Next week we’ll be starting on a detailed look at Lion Air flight 610 but first, to celebrate the end of 2019, I want to share the most popular posts of the year. Most of these are older posts and in fact only one of them was written this year, which makes me worry that…

Read more… 27 Dec 19

Seasonal Greetings from Fear of Landing

I’m pretty sure it’s a tradition now that I get the Friday before Christmas off. At least, I hope so, because I’ve got some kind of horrible sniffly-sneezy-coughing-possibly-dying thing and I just do not have enough brain to finish the piece I have been working on. So I’m going back to bed and feeling sorry…

Read more… 20 Dec 19

Accident Reports

Procedural Drift at Yeager Airport

In the early morning hours of the 5th of May 2017, Air Cargo Carriers flight 1260 crashed at Yeager Airport in Charleston, West Virginia. There were two souls on board,…

Lion Air flight 610 and the AOA Disagree alert

I wrote before that Lion Air’s Boeing 737 had a faulty AOA sensor which was replaced the day before Lion Air flight 610. The new sensor was out of alignment…

Demystifying

"N28V, I need your call sign, please."

This general aviation accident didn’t happen on the 27th of April 2017, although I think you’ll agree with me that it was a near thing. The aircraft, a 1964 Mooney…

Aviation Airspeed Guide

Just a quick one today but I really liked this guide to the airspeed indicator which was published to r/aviation. The thread has ended up in an interesting discussion about…

History

The Real “Bionic Man”

Some of you may have spotted the recent comments on Wingless Flight in the M2-F1 by aerospace journalist and author Nigel Macknight, who had written about NASA’s M2-F2 pilot Milt…

Flight 19: The Point of No Return

I was interviewed about Flight 19 for a documentary recently and although I’ve limited the details of the experience to supporters of my personal Patreon (for travel writing and essays),…

Fun Stuff

Toddler Overboard and other aviation videos

I’ve got quite a collection of interesting videos building up so it’s past time for me to share them! These are not all brand new but new to me and…

Airbus A320 vs Grumman Avenger

I was offered the opportunity of a free week in Berlin, which is fabulous but I’ve been travelling so much, I haven’t had the time to write something new. What…