Latest Posts   –  Page 50

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 Thomson, whom he knew when he was editing and publishing Space Flight News back in the 1980s. In the article Nigel was commenting on, I…

Read more… 8 May 20

Wine for the Soul

I’m thrilled to have another guest post by our very own Rudy Jakma! I hope you enjoy it as much as I have. Wine for the Soul by Rudy Jakma You may have heard about the Beaujolais race? The fruity wine from the Beaujolais region in the south of France is sold after a few…

Read more… 1 May 20

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 by about 21°, one of the key factors leading to the uncommanded MCAS trim which caused the crash. Under normal circumstances, this would have been…

Read more… 24 Apr 20

64-year-old Civilian Ejects Himself from Dassault Rafale B Fighter Jet

Last Wednesday, aviation journalist Clement Charpentreau at Aerotime News shared this hard-to-believe French report involving a French civilian who managed to eject himself from a military jet on a surprise flight given to him as a retirement gift. I loved it and wanted to share it with all of you, so I mailed Clement, who…

Read more… 17 Apr 20

Mooney: Engine Failure on Take-Off

I was looking for something else entirely when I found the docket for this case, a Mooney crash in 2004. The NTSB report is only six pages and most of that is the standard form and bad pagination. I wouldn’t normally bother with a crash this simple but I found it intriguing how the docket…

Read more… 10 Apr 20

“N28V, I need your call sign, please.”

This general aviation accident didn’t happen on the 27th of April 2017. The aircraft, a 1964 Mooney M20E registration N7828V, was at Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport at Broomfield, Colorado; it’s still commonly referred to as Jeffco Airport (short for Jefferson County) although it changed its name in 2006. Jeffco is a large airport with an…

Read more… 3 Apr 20

Accident Reports

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…

Demystifying

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…

History

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.…

Fun Stuff

Aviation Stories You Might Have Missed

I hope you all are having a wonderful holiday season. This week, I’ve put together a compilation of interesting items in the press that you might have missed while enjoying…

Nathan Pyle Strange Worlds

Thank you so much for all the kind words. I don’t quite have the wherewithal to respond to each of you individually but I very much appreciate all of you…