Accidents

The creation and nearly 30-year operational life of the French/Anglo Concorde, the world’s first operational supersonic airliner, is a rich history of cross-border cooperation and innovation at a time long before the personal computer revolution or the first cell phone. In fact, the origins of the first supersonic transport (SST) date back to before the […]

Indonesian navy divers have recovered the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) from the Lion Air Boeing 737 Max 8 that crashed into the Java Sea on October 29, marking a breakthrough in the investigation that could answer vital questions about what caused the disaster that took the lives of all 189 people on board. The CVR […]

An experienced, commercially-rated pilot made what could certainly be considered a rookie mistake during his approach to runway 18 at the Jesse Viertel Memorial airport in Booneville, Missouri. The pilot, flying a Bellanca Viking in April 2017, flew the final approach at an extremely low altitude, much lower than normal, on a day without a […]

Ahead of next month’s release by the NTSB of its Most Wanted List of safety priorities, the Aviation Safety Network published its 2018 statistics that showed 15 fatal airliner accidents, that resulted in 556 fatalities. “Despite several high-profile accidents, 2018 was one of the safest years ever for commercial aviation.” ASN said last year was […]

A rescue helicopter crashed on Saturday after it collided with the world’s longest zipline in Ras al-Khaimah in the northeastern region of the United Arab Emirates, killing the four crew members on board. Video showed the Leonardo AW139 spinning out of control before crashing in a fireball as the helicopter was flying a rescue mission […]

One big fear in the world of manned aviation these days is for an airplane to collide with a drone. A Grupo Aeromexico crew flying a Boeing 737-800 got the scare of a lifetime as this exact scenario likely happened last week. The commercial airliner flying from Guadalajara to Tijuana appears to have ran into […]

While the flying car is not a new concept, with the first example emerging in the 1940s, no company has of yet succeeded in producing a viable model. However, there are several companies currently working hard at the idea. This week, Detroit, Michigan-based Detroit Flying Cars had a mishap during a test flight, causing major […]

In my first column I promised unmitigated honesty, so let’s begin there. Since last writing, a buried detail from the accident has unearthed itself from my memory. The way I told it last month, once I recovered from the near stall-spin there was so little runway left, I simply had to put the airplane down […]

Do you believe your backside or your lyin’ eyes?

Someone once suggested that if you want to know how you would feel crossing an ocean in a single-engine airplane, you should just fly out to sea for a couple of hours and then turn around and come back. There’s something about being out of sight of land that, to paraphrase Samuel Johnson’s remark about […]