Accidents

Having reached the two-year mark, the disappearance of MH370 can certainly be called the greatest mystery since Amelia Earhart. But after talking with colleagues, friends and acquaintances, I’ve stumbled on another mystery. Despite scientific evidence that proves otherwise, many of these educated people are emphatic in their belief that a 650,000-pound airplane is hidden in […]

The following is an edited transcript of communications between 
Colorado Springs Approach Control and Tower and the pilot of a Mooney M20E arriving on an IFR flight plan from Rapid City, South Dakota. 869: Springs Approach, Mooney 79869, checking in 10,000 with Sierra. APP: 
 Mooney 79869, Springs Approach, 
expect an ILS Runway 17L. 869: […]

It was the slightest of rumbles. Both John and I felt it. John, who was at the controls, eased the yoke forward slightly and the rumble stopped. We landed and taxied to the ramp. We had an airplane full of pilots, but no one else had felt the rumble. It was the aerodynamic warning of […]

The following is excerpted from The Vanishing of Flight MH370 by Richard Quest, Berkley Publishing. Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 — with 239 people aboard — departed from Kuala Lumpur during the late evening of March 7, 2014, bound for Beijing, China, and has never been seen since. Despite the largest aviation search in history, virtually […]

The rudder travel limiter of the Indonesia AirAsia Airbus A320 began acting up in January 2014. Attempts to fix it were unsuccessful, and failures became increasingly frequent. In the course of 74 flights between December 19 and December 27, 2014, the airplane’s electronic centralized aircraft monitoring system, or ECAM, reported more than 30 faults. Many […]

There is more conclusive evidence that the debris found on the coast of Mozambique earlier this month was likely from the missing Malaysian airliner MH370. During the past few days, the two items were analyzed by investigators from Australia and Malaysia who concluded that the debris is “highly likely” to have come from MH370, a […]

Pilots of the FlyDubai Boeing 737 that crashed in Russia on Saturday after a second attempt to land in high winds were warned by controllers of wind shear moments before the jetliner descended rapidly and exploded in a fireball next to the runway. Both flight recorders have been recovered, and experts from the United Arab […]

An Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 787-8 scheduled to fly from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to Rome, had just completed boarding and was about to depart when the nose gear collapsed at the gate. Passengers were shaken in the incident, and one flight attendant was injured. The Dreamliner, not surprisingly, received significant damage. The question of how in […]

In a final accident report investigating the crash of Germanwings Flight 9525, the Bureau d’Enquêtes et d’Analyses (BEA) cites weaknesses in detecting and reporting mental illnesses in pilots. On March 24, 2015, Andreas Lubitz waited until he was alone in the cockpit, locked the cabin door and deliberately crashed the aircraft into the French Alps, […]

It wasn’t Bruce’s fault. That was the question on the minds of many after news surfaced that “Ed Force One,” a Boeing 747 piloted by Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson, was badly damaged after colliding with a tow truck on the ground at the airport in Santiago, Chile, on Saturday, March 12, 2016. Two ground […]