Accidents

There are two kinds of people: those who find spins exhilarating, and those who find them terrifying. I found them exhilarating when my instructor, Betty Faux, first demonstrated them to me in a Cessna 150 during the course of my post-private-ticket training. I promptly invited friends to share this great thrill. We would fly out […]

“It’s a one-G maneuver. It’s absolutely nonhazardous, but it’s very impressive.” So Tex Johnson explained himself to Boeing president Bill Allen after performing an impromptu barrel-roll in the 707 prototype before a Seattle gathering of IATA bigwigs. Equally impressive, but more subtle, was Bob Hoover’s demonstration, watchable on YouTube, that he could smoothly pour water […]

On January 4, 2007, at about 8:30 p.m. EST, a Cessna 182P with three aboard left Newport News, Virginia, for Columbia, South Carolina. Rain and fog were forecast for Columbia, and the pilot, a 7,200-hour ATP, had filed an IFR flight plan earlier in the evening. The right-seat passenger, himself an instrument-rated commercial pilot and […]

The 500-hour pilot held a private license for aircraft single-engine land. He did not have an instrument rating, but had been receiving instruction toward one. The airplane was a J35 Bonanza, manufactured in 1958 and equipped with tip tanks that increased its fuel capacity to 100 gallons. The pilot was solo when he left New […]

A 473-hour instrument-rated private pilot, alone in a fully fueled Cirrus SR22-G2, took off from Reno, Nevada, early on a Sunday evening in February 2005. The sun had set half an hour earlier; the moon, above a layer of clouds, was a mere sliver. He had filed an IFR flight plan via Truckee and Sacramento […]

Two pilots left South Jersey Regional Airport in a Piper Arrow at about five o’clock on an April afternoon for some instrument flying practice. The left seat pilot, with 334 hours, had single engine land and sea and instrument ratings; she had logged 100 hours of simulated and nine hours of actual instrument time, as […]

On a cloudless morning in April of this year, a C-5B transport of the 436th Airlift Wing took off from Dover AFB in Delaware, bound for Ramstein Air Base in Germany on a routine supply mission. The C-5 is the United States Air Force’s largest transport; this one’s takeoff weight was 742,000 pounds, including a […]

In the spring of 2002 a Beech D-45, the civilianized version of the Bonanza-derived T-34 Mentor military trainer, crashed while attempting a landing in gusty conditions at Minden, Louisiana. Both occupants of the tandem two-seat airplane were killed. The Mentor’s owner, a private pilot, had flown over 1,000 hours in it since acquiring it in […]

In December 2000 a tower controller in southern Florida received a single radio transmission: “Mayday mayday mayday Pitts 260DB in an unrecoverable flat spin at 3,500 feet.” The airplane crashed in the Everglades, coming to rest partially inverted and nearly vertical in several feet of water. The canopy, which had been jettisoned in flight, was […]

In May 1999, in Plattsmouth, Nebraska, a two-seat homebuilt GP-4 crashed shortly after takeoff, killing its 73-year-old builder and 60-year-old passenger. Both men were licensed pilots. The builder had logged 181.4 hours in the airplane since first flying it 15 months earlier. The weather at the time of the accident was clear and mild. According […]