Latest Posts   –  Page 5

The Odd Story of Richard Floyd McCoy Jr

I’ve been working hard on volume two of Without a Trace and, of course, I can’t resist a chapter on Dan Cooper, who successfully hijacked a Northwest Orient aircraft and disappeared mid-flight, never to be heard of again. As a part of this, I investigated the story of Richard McCoy Jr, whom some believe to…

Read more… 26 Oct 18

ATC Heroes: A Super Bowl Save

This is the happy-ending story of a Cessna Cardinal flying back to his home base of Paris Airfield, Texas in bad weather when the aircraft experienced a complete electrical failure. I found this amazing story on the NATCA website and they kindly gave me permission to reprint it. The New England Patriots’ stunning comeback win…

Read more… 19 Oct 18

Hitting the Wall

In the early hours of the morning, an Air India aircraft struck the airport perimeter wall at Tiruchirappalli International Airport in Tamil Nadu, India. Tiruchirappalli International Airport, commonly referred to as ‘Trichy’, has a 2,480-meter asphalt runway (8,136 feet) which is planned to be extended. The runway is 9/27 and the wall in question is…

Read more… 12 Oct 18

Turning a Runway Overrun into a Crash (East Coast Jets flight 81)

Last week, I went through the details of the fatal runway overrun of East Coast Jets flight 81). This is one of those accidents where it seems easy to blame the pilots for not following procedure and then, when it went wrong, making bad decisions. I needed to split the posts in order to have…

Read more… 5 Oct 18

Fatal Runway Overrun (East Coast Jets flight 81-2008)

On the 31st of July in 2008, East Coast Jets flight 81 departed Atlantic City International Airport carrying two pilots and six passengers for a non-scheduled domestic passenger flight to Owatonna Degner Regional Airport in Owatonna, Minnesota. Two and a half hours later, they were dead. This crash is interesting to me because at first…

Read more… 28 Sep 18

High Altitude Rescue Gone Wrong

In 2015, the Utah Department of Public Safety reported that one of its helicopters nearly crashed during a recovery operation in Draper UT. The NTSB report reference GAA15CA258 and the raw video were released in 2016 but I’ve only just seen this, thanks to the excellent feed of aviation videos run by What You Haven’t…

Read more… 21 Sep 18

Accident Reports

What happened on Ethiopian flight 302: a breakdown of the preliminary report

Yesterday, the 4th of April, the Ethiopian Accident Investigation Bureau investigating the crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 released the Preliminary Report (local version stored at bottom of this post).…

The Reckless Final Approach of US Bangla Flight 211

The crash of US Bangla flight 211 made international headlines when it occurred on the 12th of March 2018; however, it wasn’t until a month ago that the true sequence…

Demystifying

What Is Going On With The Boeing 737 Max 8?

The news is dominated right now with the grounding of the Boeing 737 Max 8 after a second fatal crash of a passenger jet which could be related to the…

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…

History

Building a B-29 Piece by Piece

I’m in Austria this week, giving a presentation about the representation of old women in science fiction. So it seemed only right to celebrate a woman in aviation who might…

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…

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…