Sometimes it’s obvious how an accident report is going to end from the very first sentence. NTSB Identification: CEN15FA400 “The airplane owner, who was a noninstrument-rated private pilot and did not hold a multiengine airplane rating, was conducting a visual flight rules (VFR), personal cross-county flight in the multiengine airplane.” I almost did not bother…
Read more… 26 May 17
The Bundesstelle für Flugunfalluntersuchung (BFU) also known as the German Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accident Investigation, released a preliminary report on the Bombadier CL604 which encountered extreme wake turbulence in January. I usually wait for the final report but, in this case, it is very straight-forward and I’d be surprised if further details will come…
Read more… 19 May 17
On the 4th of March 2015 a Turkish Airlines Airbus A330-303 left the runway when landing at Kathmandu. The headlines called it a database error. When I read the accident report, however, I discovered that it wasn’t that simple. The Captain was 55 years old and had almost 15,000 hours with 1,500 on type: he’d…
Read more… 12 May 17
This has been an amazing week for aviation news with unbelievable stories and videos seemingly coming from all directions. Anna and I have been posting every day to the Fear of Landing Facebook page but I wanted to share the best here. First off, the incredible crash landing in Everett, Washington. The pilot had just…
Read more… 5 May 17
The man in the video is Peter Powell, a British entrepreneur who famously developed steerable kites using dual lines in 1972. He started by selling the kites from the back of his car and then began selling them on Paignton sea front. He had no shop window, he sold them simply by flying the kites…
Read more… 28 Apr 17
You may recall these photographs from the mainstream media in 2009, when an aircraft crashed into an airport building, killing one passenger. The CRJ-100 had just taken off from Kigali International Airport when the flight crew declared an emergency after developing a fault with the throttle. They returned to Kigali and landed safely. At the…
Read more… 21 Apr 17
On the 19th of February 2023, a private pilot arranged to meet with a flight instructor at Birr Airfield to fly a Cessna 172 Skyhawk. That morning, the flight instructor…
On the 9th of August 2024 at 16:22, Voepass flight 2283, a scheduled flight from Cascavel, Paraná, to Guarulhos, São Paulo entered a flat spin and crashed into a residential…
There are a number of reasons why you might need to quickly point out the differences between a General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon and a Eurofighter EF2000 Typhoon. You might…
A few days ago (21st of May 2024), Singapore Airlines flight SQ321 encountered heavy turbulence on a passenger flight from London-Heathrow to Singapore. There were 229 on board, including eighteen…
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…
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.…
Mistakes were made. All of them were mine. Before I left for Dresden, I planned out my full itinerary. Berlin is a much busier airport than Tallinn, so I needed…
I’m in Dresden at the moment and I’m afraid I haven’t had a free moment to write you a new article. Luckily, lots of other people are on the internet…