Saturday a Continental Airlines Boeing 737 left the runway, shearing off its main and nose landing gear as well as the left engine nacelle. It then caught fire and was destroyed; miraculously no one was killed. I always hesitate to comment on aviation accidents because it is an opportunity to put foot [...]

There is a lot of traffic on this; it is not as the article says “quite unusual but probably not unheard of”. It happens often for different reasons. The aircraft or the airfield could be out of qualification (usual reason), or the crew could be out of qualification, Captain not past 150 hours [...]

Instead of “The best air race pilot ever!!!”; this should be titled the best video hoax ever. I keep getting the video in my inbox. It was on the American Airlines Union website where quite a few experienced professional pilots fell for it. I even got it from a current Test Pilot [...]

Is that cool or what? My favorite aircraft, the F-4 phantom II, circa 1968. No not me, I’m not that old, I flew the Phantom in VX-30 in the mid-late 90’s. This is however my favorite clip of a carrier landing. So how is it done?
Not really a mystery; imagine an [...]

I have received a lot of questions on the crash of an F/A-18 Hornet in San Diego. First let me say that the biggest nightmare of a Tactical Aviator is dropping a jet into a neighborhood. It is something you think about often. It is why many pilots over the years have [...]

I keep getting links to this hoax. The latest is a site that has a game show quality to it; you get to pick “lucky or no lucky”. In reference to whether the pilot makes it. It should read hoax or no hoax. Rather than drag out all the aero-dynamic and [...]

I was surprised to find an incredibly clear example of an arresting cable failing on the USS George Washington. A F/A-18 is almost fully decelerated when the cross deck pendant parts (arresting cable breaks). It shows in detail what my last post described.

As the cable plays out from the arresting gear room below [...]

I saw a copy of this tape with a question on what went wrong. The two most likely causes are “two blocking the gear” or a cross deck pendant failure. They ultimately end up being the same result with different causes.
First- two blocking the gear: An aircraft carrier’s arresting gear mechanism is [...]