Accidents

Last October the French magazine Jeune Afrique reported that the cause of the mysterious crash of a twin-turboprop L-410 Turbolet at Bandundu, Democratic Republic of Congo, on Aug. 25 had been revealed. According to the sole human survivor of the accident, a crocodile concealed in a “sports bag” stored at the back of the cabin […]

(January 2011) — It happened nearly seven years ago, but the accident remains a shining example of a confluence of unlikely circumstances causing a catastrophe when none of them, by itself, would have amounted to more than a nuisance. Five airplanes belonging to Pan Am International Flight Academy were flying from Deer Valley Airport in […]

The pilot, 69, had almost finished a six-month refurbishment of a Piper PA-12 Super Cruiser. He had been rebuilding airplanes for 40 years, and his habit was to have a certain A&P mechanic perform a “semifinal” inspection as each project neared completion. The mechanic would give him a list of things that needed to be […]

According to an eyewitness whose attention was caught by the loud gunning of its engine as it approached the airport, the little two-seater’s wings both vibrated visibly before the left wing folded back against the fuselage. The airplane pitched downward and began to spin; the right wing then bent upward, and it too folded back […]

En route from Miami to Medellin, Colombia, the cockpit satellite phone rang on board Kalitta Air’s 747-200. Dispatch was calling with a request. A competitor’s 747 freighter was experiencing mechanical problems in Bogotá. The competitor would be unable to transport a large load of flowers back to the United States. Would the crew divert into […]

Early on June 23 of last year, two men and three teenage boys left Spirit of St. Louis Airport in a Cherokee Lance for some trout fishing at Gaston’s White River Resort, which is located in the Ozarks of northern Arkansas. The 170 nm flight took an hour and a quarter. Three days later, on […]

A look at the NTSB’s report on the February 2009 crash in Buffalo, New York.

The e-mail we received here at Flying from Col. Sid “Scroll” Mayeux, chief of aviation safety at the United States Air Force Safety Center, was a little hard to believe. “Last year (Fiscal Year 2009),” Mayeux’s e-mail read, “was the USAF’s safest year in aviation safety, with 17 Class A Aviation Flight Mishaps for a […]

Many years ago the author Richard Bach, then writing for Flying, proposed that the solution for a pilot who had flown into a box canyon and could not turn between its walls was to pull up into a vertical climb, perform a stall turn and recover going in the other direction. Pilots who had never […]

A Colorado couple, both pilots with 2,000 hours and instrument ratings, had taken their Malibu to Hutchinson, Kansas, for its annual inspection. They returned home to Steamboat Springs in a rented car, and two weeks later drove back to Hutchinson to retrieve the airplane. The work done had included the removal of free play from […]