B-58 Escape Capsule to B-2 Ejection Seat: How Bomber Crews Get Out
Share this story On 8 December 1964, at Bunker Hill Air Force Base in Indiana, a Convair B-58 Hustler sat on the ramp going nowhere. Cranes were rigged alongside it. Then one of its three crew stations fired itself off the aeroplane on a rocket, climbed away on a...
Jimmy Doolittle’s Blind Flight: The 1929 Landing Made on Instruments
Share this story On 24 September 1929, Lieutenant Jimmy Doolittle climbed into the rear cockpit of a biplane at Mitchel Field on Long Island, and somebody pulled a canvas hood over his head. From that moment he could see nothing outside. He could see only a handful of...
Pan Am Flight 6: The 1956 Pacific Ditching Where All 31 Survived
Share this story In the middle of the night, halfway between Honolulu and San Francisco, the Boeing Stratocruiser Clipper Sovereign of the Skies lost two of its four engines. It was too far from land to make it either way. So for hours, its crew flew circles in the...
flydubai FZ1073: Co-Pilot Planned the Attack Before He Was Hired
Share this story Five days after the cockpit attack on flydubai flight FZ1073, the picture of the man accused of carrying it out has turned darker. According to two Israeli officials who spoke to Reuters, the Omani first officer told UAE interrogators that he planned...
How Air-Ambulance Jets Work: Crews, Cabins and Long-Range Medevac
Share this story Most people picture an air ambulance as a helicopter landing on a motorway. But when a patient is hundreds or thousands of kilometres from the hospital they need, or stuck in a foreign country after an accident, the job goes to a jet. Air-ambulance...
Crash Axe Explained: Why Every Airliner Carries One in the Cockpit
Share this story Airport security will confiscate a pocket knife, a pair of long scissors or a corkscrew with a blade. Yet behind the locked cockpit door of almost every airliner you board, there is an axe. It is not a secret and it is not a loophole. Aviation...
Two-Person Cockpit Rule Explained: Germanwings, EASA and What Changed
Share this story For about two years after March 2015, if you flew with almost any European airline and one of the pilots stepped out to use the lavatory, a flight attendant stepped in. They did not touch the controls. They simply stood or sat in the cockpit until the...
ValuJet 592 to Power Banks: What You Cannot Take on a Plane
Share this story The shipping ticket said “Oxy Cannisters — ‘Empty’.” The spelling was wrong and so was the word in quotation marks. There were five cardboard boxes, each weighing 45 to 50 pounds, and they were loaded into the forward...
El Al Flight 1862: The 747 That Lost Two Engines Over Amsterdam
Share this story Thirty-four years ago tonight, a little after half past six, a Boeing 747 freighter fell out of the sky over Amsterdam and into a block of flats. El Al Flight 1862 had taken off from Schiphol just over thirteen minutes earlier. Both engines on its...
FAA Rules Boeing 737 MAX Software Glitch Is Not a Safety Concern
Share this story A week ago it was the glitch that froze the Boeing 737 MAX 10’s certification. On Friday, 2 October 2026, the Federal Aviation Administration decided it was not a safety problem after all. A panel of FAA safety experts concluded that a software...
Recent Comments