Accidents

A Piper Cherokee struck a mobile home in Lake Worth, Florida, on Tuesday evening, killing the pilot and a young woman sleeping inside the trailer. Footage from nearby surveillance shows the plane in a steep bank, its wings almost vertical, before it dives into the mobile home. Flames engulfed the plane and the trailer, where […]

An airplane whose CG is significantly far behind the aft limit becomes neutrally stable or even mildly unstable. It can still be flown by a sufficiently alert pilot, but to a pilot who is unprepared for it, the experience is disorienting and can easily lead to overcontrol. Overcontrol in the nose-up direction, in turn, can […]

While we hear of gear up landings from time to time, a gear up takeoff is definitely an unusual incident. But here is a video that serves as proof that it does happen, too. A Mooney M20C departing from Raglan, New Zealand, dropped on its nose just as it was about to lift off a […]

An American Airlines copilot safely landed an Airbus A320 in Syracuse, New York, yesterday after the captain became ill and died on the scheduled flight from Phoenix to Boston. American Flight 550 left Phoenix at 11:55 p.m. local time Sunday with 147 passengers onboard and diverted mid-flight, landing shortly after 7 a.m. EDT on Monday. […]

An unlicensed pilot in rural south Georgia, about 100 miles from Savannah, crashed his homebuilt plane on September 16 at about 3:40 a.m., killing all five people on board. No probable cause was identified in a preliminary report from the National Transportation and Safety Board last week, and there is no evidence of mechanical defects […]

A Piper Aerostar used in the Tom Cruise film “Mena” crashed near Medellin, Colombia, on Friday, killing two and leaving one in critical condition. The U.S. embassy confirmed the crash Sunday, but did not release the names of the occupants. However, local reports say the victims of the deadly crash were veteran Hollywood pilot Alan […]

The 157 passengers and 13 crew members aboard a British Airways Boeing 777 that suffered what appears to be a catastrophic uncontained engine failure during the takeoff roll are lucky to be alive after a serious fire and billowing black smoke severely damaged the jetliner on the runway at Las Vegas International Airport yesterday. Had […]

The National Transportation Safety Board today blamed the deadly crash of a Gulfstream IV last year in Bedford, Massachusetts, on pilot error, saying the crew exhibited a “long-term pattern” of failing to complete preflight checklists that contributed directly to the accident. At a hearing in Washington, D.C., this morning, the Board said that the GIV’s […]

The UK’s Air Accident Investigation Branch has issued its initial report on the tragic accident in which a Hawker Hunter T7 crashed during a demonstration flight at an airshow at the Shoreham Airport. The report confirmed that 11 people on the ground died as a result of the crash while the pilot surprisingly survived, albeit […]

The King Air had been airborne for just 30 minutes, en route from Pine Bluff to Bentonville in Arkansas, when it began its descent from 16,500 feet. The weather was clear, and the 3,400-hour private pilot, 72, was on VFR flight following with Razorback Approach at Fort Smith. Nine minutes after leaving 16.5, he told […]