Latest Posts – Page 69
The Odd Story of Richard Floyd McCoy Jr
I’ve been working hard on volume two of Without a Trace and, of course, I can’t resist a chapter on Dan Cooper, who successfully hijacked a Northwest Orient aircraft and disappeared mid-flight, never to be heard of again. As a part of this, I investigated the story of Richard McCoy Jr, whom some believe to…
Read more… 26 Oct 18
ATC Heroes: A Super Bowl Save
This is the happy-ending story of a Cessna Cardinal flying back to his home base of Paris Airfield, Texas in bad weather when the aircraft experienced a complete electrical failure. I found this amazing story on the NATCA website and they kindly gave me permission to reprint it. The New England Patriots’ stunning comeback win…
Read more… 19 Oct 18
Hitting the Wall
In the early hours of the morning, an Air India aircraft struck the airport perimeter wall at Tiruchirappalli International Airport in Tamil Nadu, India. Tiruchirappalli International Airport, commonly referred to as ‘Trichy’, has a 2,480-meter asphalt runway (8,136 feet) which is planned to be extended. The runway is 9/27 and the wall in question is…
Read more… 12 Oct 18
Turning a Runway Overrun into a Crash (East Coast Jets flight 81)
Last week, I went through the details of the fatal runway overrun of East Coast Jets flight 81. This is one of those accidents where it seems easy to blame the pilots for not following procedure and then, when it went wrong, making bad decisions. I needed to split the posts in order to have…
Read more… 5 Oct 18
Fatal Runway Overrun (East Coast Jets flight 81-2008)
On the 31st of July in 2008, East Coast Jets flight 81 departed Atlantic City International Airport carrying two pilots and six passengers for a non-scheduled domestic passenger flight to Owatonna Degner Regional Airport in Owatonna, Minnesota. Two and a half hours later, they were dead. This crash is interesting to me because at first…
Read more… 28 Sep 18
High Altitude Rescue Gone Wrong
In 2015, the Utah Department of Public Safety reported that one of its helicopters nearly crashed during a recovery operation in Draper UT. The NTSB report reference GAA15CA258 and the raw video were released in 2016 but I’ve only just seen this, thanks to the excellent feed of aviation videos run by What You Haven’t…
Read more… 21 Sep 18
Accident Analysis
Social Media Influencers Weigh Down Aircraft
The fatal crash at Scottsdale Arizona took place directly after take-off. The passengers were a self-proclaimed crowd of social media influencers. The jet-setting influencer who had organised the flight, had…
Fatal SR22 Stall on Final at Barwick LaFayette
On the 20th of March, 2025, a Cirrus SR22 crashed in LaFayette, Georgia during an instructional flight, killing both the pilot and the flight instructor. It was a good flying…
Demystifying
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”…
The Pilots, the Probes, and the AF447 Verdict
On the 21st of May 2026, the Paris Court of Appeal convicted Airbus and Air France of involuntary manslaughter for their roles in the crash of Air France flight 447,…
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…
