Fear of Landing

The Art of Not Hitting the Ground Too Hard

  1. Friday Lightness: A Short Respite from Crash Reports

    It seems a good time for something a bit more lighthearted. After weeks of analyzing serious incidents and technical failures, I thought I could could a moment to appreciate aviation humuor that actually lands on target (unlike some aircraft that I will decline to mention). Consider this your in-flight entertainment break. We’ll return to regularly…

  2. Following the story of the Fokker F27

    Last week I wrote about the Fokker F27 mk 500 Friendship that came off the runway at take-off at Bournemouth Airport. Rudy commented on his experience flying the F27 in the comments of that post. The F27 was still a very reliable workhorse when I flew it. In widespread use as a cargo aircraft, they…

  3. Pneumatic Pressure Required

    The flight crew reported for duty at Bournemouth Airport at 3am on Friday the 7th of May 2004. They were flying a thirty-three-year-old Fokker F27 Mark 500, registered in the UK as G-CEXG, to the island of Jersey and back. The Fokker F27 Friendship was designed as a successor to the DC-3, which had been…

  4. Flights of Fantasy: Aviation April Fools Worth Celebrating

    I’m going to admit that I’m not a great fan of April Fools’ pranks, especially not attempts to trick people into believing something and then pulling the rug out from under them. But when an April Fools Day joke is poking fun at the world in a way that we all get to be in…

  5. How to tell a Russian Su-27 from a British Typhoon

    This is not an article that I ever thought I would feel compelled to write! However, given the confusion over a photograph chosen in a regional English paper, apparently it’s a conversation that we need to have. Let’s start by working out what went wrong. Estonia, 2019 On the 25th of June in 2019, the…