I am home! I had an amazing time in Iceland. Sadly, the aviation museum in Akureyri was only open on Saturday afternoons and I couldn’t make it work. When I took this photograph at Akureyri Airport, it was -17ºC with a feels-like of -22ºC, so somewhere around 0°F. My time there was amazing, if a bit cold, and I was wonderfully productive during the residency. It was great to be so focused. I’m burning to do the same again for an aviation book now! I also took some time off for tourism. This week, I’m going to update you on some of the articles from the past month and add a few new pieces for ..read more

This video of a mid-air wheel exchange goes viral once a year or so, but I never get tired of watching it. Last week, it showed up on Reddit and I discovered that I last write about it over ten years ago, so it seems reasonable to have a repeat. Air crash averted by women’s pluck and iron nerve. Woman pilot changes planes and fixes new landing wheel on disabled plane in mid-air. (If you are reading from the mailing list, you may need to click through to the website to see the videos) In the video, we see a woman clinging to a bi-plane as it takes off and flies beneath another bi-plane which i ..read more

This week, we have a guest post by J.B. Rivard who wrote an article for the American Aviation Historical Society (AAHS) and used one of my articles as a reference. He sent a copy of his work to me and I loved it! I asked if I could share it with you and he was kind enough to say yes. J.B is a fascinating man: engineer, artist, Navy vet, and retired nuclear reactor specialist. He is a scholar of aviation history, but has also recently released a historical novel, Dead Heat to Destiny, following three citizens (and a spy!) whose lives are transformed by the First World War. The novel is currentl ..read more

Today’s guest post is from NASA! OK, it wasn’t written specifically for me but NASA have made it available to educators so I thought I’d give them the opportunity to be highlighted here. This is an exploration of how NASA research has influenced modern airliners through research and technology. What I find fascinating is how this image immediately makes those breakthroughs visible on a practical level. You can click through for a larger version of the image. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Starting in the 1970s, NASA began developing sophisticated computer codes that could accurately pre ..read more

My friend Maria at Daedalean wrote this article about how they are using AI to help pilots detect gliders. I thought it was fascinating and Daedalean gave me permission to share it with you! I hope you find it interesting as well. Training A Helicopter/Airplane AI Copilot to Spot Gliders Noticing all fixed wing, rotercraft and drones in time by Maria Pirson When developing our Visual Traffic Detection technology, it’s crucial to address all kinds of potential encounters. So we collect large data sets on any possible scenario. That way, we can ensure that our software performs reliab ..read more

This week’s guest post is not actually here. It’s over at the Guardian: MH370: one of aviation’s biggest mysteries remains unsolved 10 years on by Oliver Holmes. I first spoke to Oliver a few years back when he was writing a different piece on the loss of Malaysia Airlines 370, and I was impressed with his curiosity and thoroughness. When he contacted me about this article, I was less excited. Quite honestly, I didn’t think I had anything new to say about the issues, other than a few muttered comments about the Netflix special and lack of basic fact checking. There’s a lot of excitement about ..read more

A reader contacted me about a fatal crash which killed a pilot and his instructor in November 2021. The reader had some specific questions, which I answered as best I could. However, a few aspects aren’t that clear cut, so I told him I would post it to Fear of Landing and see what other commenters had to say about it. Think of it as a guest post, except that you are the guest and half of the post is in the comments. The final report (ERA22FA058) came out January of this year, so it was under work for over two years, which I found surprising. The aircraft was a Cessna 172S, registered in the U ..read more

Aviation in Iceland started with an airline, not an aircraft. Flugfélag Íslands, the first Icelandic airline, was founded in Reykjavík on the 22nd of March 1919. They did not (yet) have an aeroplane. This was just a few weeks after William Boeing had a C-700 built for himself to explore the exciting new prospect of airmail delivery.On the 3rd of March, William Boeing and Eddie Hubbard flew 60 letters from Vancouver, BC, Canada to Seattle, Washington in the US, making for North America’s first international mail delivery. By now, it was clear that aviation was going to change the world. The 191 ..read more

On the 5th of January 2024, Alaska Airlines flight 1282 had just taken off when it lost a door plug, leaving a gaping hole on the left side of row 26. I wrote about the incident that week. The NTSB released a four-minute video of the investigators on the aircraft and I found it interesting to see them in action. The NTSB invited the following to take part in the investigation: Alaska Airlines, Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA), Association of Flight Attendants – CWA (AFA-CWA), Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the Boeing Company (Boeing), Spirit AeroSystems, and the International Associ ..read more

On the 3rd of February 2024, an Airbus A320-200, registered in Lithuania as LY-NVL, departed the runway upon landing at Vilnius, Lithuania. This was an Avion Express flight, an operator based in Vilnius that offers seasonal flights to Egypt and performs charter flights for tour operators. Flight NVD8242 was a chartered passenger flight from Milan, Italy, to Vilnius, with 179 passengers and six crew on board. The weather that day was overcast with clouds at 300 feet above ground level. Visibility was 5,000 metres and wind coming from 280° at 13 knots. Vilnius Airport has a single runway made of ..read more