Latest Posts – Page 57
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 Analysis
Why KLM Cut the Steering Cables on Two Perfectly Functional Boeing 737s
Last month, we looked at the night of 28th of November 2004 at Barcelona Airport. KLM 1673 ran off the runway at high speed, stopping just short of a canal.…
KLM 1673 Veers Off the Runway with Full Right Rudder
On the 28th of November 2004, a Boeing B737 ran off the runway at Barcelona Airport. The weather had been good at Barcelona that evening. The flight crew agreed to land…
Demystifying
How Important is Having a Sterile Cockpit?
This question was posted to r/flying by a private pilot who wanted to know: do airline pilots ever engage in small talk about irrelevant things during taxiing, run-up, takeoff, and…
Someone has to write the TAF
It turns out that there a person sitting there deciding what the weather is going to do. Which seems obvious, except that I had somehow never asked msyelf who “someone”…
History
The CIA's Shark Screen
Today we have a guest post from the CIA! In their archives, researching something completely different, I found the answer to a question I never thought to ask. I immediately…
The First Jet to Land on an Aircraft Carrier (Deliberately)
“The Vampire was the first jet to land on a moving aircraft carrier deliberately.” This quote from Airshow Luke, our MC at the Legacy of Liberty airshow, made me almost…
Fun Stuff
Petrified, Petrified, Petrified
There’s been some interesting reporting in the UK media about a “near disaster” over Canary Wharf involving the captain having to intervene (the horror!) after air data systems failed on…
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…
