This was initially brought to my attention by Tom Podolec Aviation on Twitter who posted about a Piper PA-28 in distress. The student pilot, a 17-year-old woman named Maggie Taraska, had just taken off when the right main gear fell off the aircraft on departure. Piper PA-28 in distress. Reported as the right main gear…
Read more… 14 Sep 18
Princess Juliana International Airport handles only about 60,000 aircraft movements a year (compared to almost 500,000 at Heathrow) but it is renowned the world over because of its layout. One end of the 2,000 m/7,000 foot runway (10/28) is very close to Maho Beach and the low approaches are very popular on Youtube. There are…
Read more… 7 Sep 18
Today’s piece is a guest post by someone who wishes to remain anonymous. I think it’s great that he’s not only willing to learn from his rather frightening experience but happy to share it with the rest of us. Let me preface this by saying that both myself and the plane are fine, the only…
Read more… 31 Aug 18
I received an interesting Esquire article by email from a reader who thought I would enjoy the detailed story of Swissair Flight 111. Published in 2000, it’s called The Long Fall of One-Eleven Heavy and is a very emotional and literary description of the crash of Swissair flight 111. Swissair flight 111 was a scheduled…
Read more… 24 Aug 18
On Friday, the 10th of August 2018, Seattle looked on in horror as a de Havilland Dash 8-400 flew what appeared to be aerobatics over the Puget Sound before crashing onto Ketron Island. At about 19:35 local time, the controller at Seattle Tacoma Airport (SEATAC) realised there was an unidentified aircraft on runway 16C. You…
Read more… 17 Aug 18
This is a continuation of my analysis of the Malaysian Safety Investigation Report. Last week we looked at the flight details of Malaysia Airlines flight 370, with a focus on the turn back and the response of Air Traffic Control. The detail offered in the report showed that the first turn was almost certainly flown…
Read more… 10 Aug 18
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…
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”…
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…
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…