Latest Posts   –  Page 64

Thermal Image of 757 Landing at Gatwick

This thermal imaging footage of a Boeing 757 coming into land at Gatwick airport dates from 2013 but I first saw it today on r/aviation and found myself mesmerised as I watched the changes in the infra-red spectrum. I found the comments on the post pretty interesting, too. The bulk of the discussion is about…

Read more… 2 Aug 19

Three Cheeseburgers and a Rental Car

Aircraft hijacks are pretty rare since airport security started checking bags before allowing them on the flight. However, I was intrigued by the story of Glenn Kurt Tripp who appeared to attempt a DB Cooper style hijack in 1980 and then again in 1983, at the end of which he was shot and killed by…

Read more… 26 Jul 19

Human Factors Breakdown: C-17 Crash at Elmendorf

Last week, we looked at a fatal C-17 accident at Elmendorf in 2010. I now want to focus on the analysis of the situation leading up to the stall. It’s clear that the flight crew did not react to the warning signs as they attempted their manoeuvres at low altitude without reaching their target airspeed.…

Read more… 19 Jul 19

Dangerous Aerobatics : C-17 crash at Elmendorf (2010)

In 2010, a US Air Force transport plane crashed just one minute after take-off while practising for the Arctic Thunder Air Show at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska. ​ The Boeing C-17 Globemaster III, a large military transport aircraft, was being flown by a highly qualified commander and three crew members, all of whom…

Read more… 12 Jul 19

Passenger-Related Safety Hazards

The ASRS Directline was the NASA publication for the Aviation Safety Reporting System which sadly is no longer producing articles but I’m pleased that they have offered me permission to reprint some of the best ones. I hope that you will enjoy this article from the ASRS Directline as much as I did. Passenger-Related Safety…

Read more… 5 Jul 19

It’s a bird…it’s a plane…it’s a car-plane!

This photograph was posted on Reddit and I immediately fell in love. Isn’t it fantastic? And the comments on the Reddit thread made me smile as well. This is like cartoon in real life. Only lacks fluffy clouds and smiling sun in the background. Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could that they…

Read more… 28 Jun 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…