On the 4th of February 2015, these horrifying photographs of TransAsia Airways flight GE235 were published around the world. These appear to be some photos of the TransAsia ATR72 crashing over the roadway. via @missxoxo168 h/t @marker7193 pic.twitter.com/7WlvhVFI6j — Airline Reporter (@AirlineReporter) February 4, 2015 Just three minutes after take off and three nautical miles…
Read more… 8 Jul 16
On the day of the accident, the captain woke up at 2am to drive to the airport. He knew it was going to be a tough, tough day. Although he tried to grab a few hours sleep in a chair in the pilot lounge, it wasn’t enough. Clearly fatigued by the end of the day,…
Read more… 1 Jul 16
This week, I am away camping in rainy North Wales. However, my friend Tatiana works for Picryl (https://picryl.com), a cross-platform application to find traces of history in photos, rare and ancient books, photos, posters and postcards in hundreds of sources like Library of Congress, the Internet Archive, and NASA. Tatiana is an aviation geek too…
Read more… 24 Jun 16
The Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station is not easy to reach. It’s located on Antartica’s ice sheet at an elevation of 2,835 metres (9,306 feet). Most of that elevation is the thickness of the ice sheet itself. The station drifts with the ice sheet about 10 metres (33 feet) every year. The temperature ranges between -13.6°C…
Read more… 17 Jun 16
On the 6th of March 2003, a Boeing 737-200 registered as 7T-VEZ, owned and operated by Air Algérie, was scheduled for a domestic passenger flight from Tamanrasset to Algiers via Ghardaïa. All times are given in UTC. The flight was three hours delayed that day for the scheduled flight DAH 6289 to Ghardaïa and Algiers.…
Read more… 10 Jun 16
The Kinross Incident is a famous aviation accident which many still believe shows proof of an extraterrestrial encounter. The story unfolds in late November in 1953 over the Great Lakes. The Air Defense Command was activated in 1946 to offer air warning and air defence for the continental United States. The plan was to extend…
Read more… 3 Jun 16
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…