Latest Posts – Page 62
Ghost Planes and Spooky Things
I noticed yesterday that the nights were getting longer and there’s a distinct chill to the air. Rudy then mentioned Samhain, the Gaelic festival marking the end of the harvest season, coinciding (not coincidentally) with All Saints’ Eve and Halloween. And what better time to share aviation’s best spooky story, the ghosts of flight 401.…
Read more… 25 Oct 19
Engine Out Over Europe
On the 23rd of August 2019, The Aviation Herald reported that a Smartwings Boeing 737-800 suffered an engine failure in flight. The Boeing 737, registration OK-TVO, departed Samos, Greece at 06:27 UTC for scheduled passenger flight QS-1125 to Prague in the Czech Republic with 170 passengers on board. About 15 minutes into the flight, flying…
Read more… 18 Oct 19
Misdiagnosis: Convair Crash at Wonderboom (part 2)
Last week, we went through the flight and crash of a Convair 340/440 at Wonderboom Airport in Pretoria. As a quick recap, as the Convair rotated the left engine caught fire. The flight crew declared an emergency but they lost control of the aircraft while still turning back as the fire melted through the aileron…
Read more… 11 Oct 19
Final Report: Convair Crash at Wonderboom, Pretoria
Last year, I wrote about the fatal Convair Crash at Pretoria which took place in June 2018. The final report came out in August which gives a lot more information than we had at the time. Convair was an American aircraft manufacturing company best known for its military aircraft, including the B-36 Peacemaker and the…
Read more… 4 Oct 19
NTSB Summary: Assumptions Can Be Fatal
Yesterday the NTSB released a Safety Recommendation Report regarding the recent Boeing 737 MAX crashes and subsequent grounding of the aircraft. I am particularly interested in this report in the aftermath of two in-depth articles that came out recently. The New York Times published William Langeweische’s What Really Brought Down the Boeing 737 Max. As…
Read more… 27 Sep 19
Draco Written Off
One of the big events of the aviation calendar is the STOL competition which takes place every May in Valdez, Alaska. I wrote about the 2019 Valdez Fly In and STOL Competition a few months ago, specifically about an amazing home-built “bush plane” named Draco: The STOL competition was broadcast live and you can watch…
Read more… 20 Sep 19
Accident Analysis
The Anatomy of an A350–CRJ Collision at Atlanta
On the 10th of September 2024, an Airbus A350 took the tail off of a Bombardier CRJ at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Georgia, USA. Delta Air Lines flight 295…
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.…
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
Bird Strikes, Balloon Landings and Falling in Love with a Boeing 777
The exciting news on Fear of Landing this week was a huge scare about critical vulnerabilities in PHP. PHP is widely used on the web, including in WordPress, which is…
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…
