On the 26th of August 2019, a glider pilot posted a video of him flying his high performance glider at the Aeroplanes Trains and Automobiles event held two days earlier in Spanish Fork, Utah. The glider was a Schleicher ASW-27, a 15-metre sailplane certified in 1997. Designed by Gerhard Waibel, a famous German sailplane designer,…
Read more… 19 Mar 21
In the early hours of Wednesday the 10th of March, a fire broke out at the OVH data centre in Strasbourg. The fire started in a room in the building known as SBG2 just before 01:00 local time. All services in all four buildings (SGB1, SGB2, SGB3 and SGB4) were halted while SGB2 blazed with…
Read more… 12 Mar 21
On the 19th of April 2018, a Malinda Air scheduled passenger flight from Kathmandu to Kuala Lumpur rejected take-off and overran the runway. The Malaysian Ministry of Transport investigated and released their final report last month. The aircraft was a Boeing B737-900 built in 2013, registered in Malaysia (9M-LNJ) and operated by Malindo Air, a…
Read more… 5 Mar 21
On the 20th of February 2021, a Boeing 777-200, flying as United Airlines flight UA328, suffered an engine failure shortly after take off from Denver International Airport for a scheduled domestic flight to Honolulu, Hawaii. There were 229 passengers and ten crew on board. United Airlines was the launch customer for the Boeing 777 when…
Read more… 26 Feb 21
When the Kantonspolizei Zürich (the police department of the Swiss canton of Zurich) posted a photograph on Facebook showing the contents of a standard patrol car, they had no idea what they were unleashing. They used a technique called knolling: a term coined in the 1980s by Andrew Kromelow, a janitor at a furniture making…
Read more… 19 Feb 21
On the 2nd of December 2020, a Boeing 737-500 flying as Air Djibouti flight IV-2065 departed Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland, to Garowe, the capital of Puntland (both generally considered to be in Somalia). I have taken the details from the Aircraft Accident Investigation Preliminary Report as hosted on AVHerald. Air Djibouti, previously known as…
Read more… 12 Feb 21
Bomber 139's Third Run: What the Investigation Found
In order to follow this analysis, you’ll need to have the details of the flight and the crash from last week’s article about the flight. When we last saw Bomber…
Bomber 139's Third Run: Downhill to Disaster
On the 6th of February 2023, a Boeing 737-3H4 Large Air Tanker crashed into a ridge line of 222 feet elevation in Fitzgerald River National Park in Western Australia. There…
Another quick round of questions and answers
It’s time for another Questions and Answers session. I started this series a few years back, when a reader asked if there was a way to pose aviation questions outside…
Durga Puja Pandal Shows Air India Flight 171 Crash
The following video from a religious festival in West Bengal, India, has caught a lot of social media attention. It shows a detailed representation of an Air India Boeing Dreamliner…
Gladys Ingle Inflight Wheel Change: Emergency Action or Stunt?
This video of a mid-air wheel exchange goes viral once a year or so, but I never get tired of watching it. Last week, it showed up on Reddit and…
The Disappearance of the Hawaii Clipper May Not Be as Mysterious as Was Thought
This week, we have a guest post by J.B. Rivard who wrote an article for the American Aviation Historical Society (AAHS) and used one of my articles as a reference.…
The Mystery of the Caged Tyres and the Porcupine Who Flew Home
This photograph was posted to r/shittyaskflying, a subreddit dedicated to asking silly questions and giving silly answers. In this case, the photograph is enough to make one wonder what’s going…
Songs About Failed Spacecraft and Space Disasters
This week, I’m handing over Fear of Landing to my friend Jack Keller who promised me a playlist of music relating to my interests. All of the titles except one…