Platinum Jet crash at Teterboro in 2005 Who is an air crash investigator? On those television documentaries, there’s always some government sleuth who cracks the case with extraordinary tenaciousness and a lot of taxpayer money to spend on labs, test flights and reconstructions. The ever-popular NBC News commentator and Greg Feith usually makes an appearance, which gives me a chance to remind my readers that his nickname is “the Mud Stud” picked up during the ValueJet crash of 1996. >Bob Benzon appears on Aircrash Confidential Bob Benzon, Bob MacIntosh, and other folks not named Bob but but with experience working for a government  accident bureau… Read More…

United’s boss Jeff Smisek resigned from the airline today, as a probe continues into whether he and other top executives agreed to provide favors for a government official in New Jersey. In a statement, United says it has been cooperating with a federal investigation and in fact, that the airline had conducted its own probe into whether David Samson of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey demanded the airline reopen a route to Columbia, South Carolina in exchange for the go-ahead on several airport projects at Newark Liberty International Airport. As reported by Bloomberg in April, the story reads like an plot from… Read More…

Updated Thursday August 6th with news from inspection in Dallas >Radome damage Glass half full: This American Airlines Boeing 787 Dreamliner, returned to Beijing safely after flying into a hail storm at 26 thousand feet (ish) after takeoff on July 27. All 209 passengers and a crew of 13 were able to continue on the way to Dallas albeit on a different airplane and with a delay. Glass half empty: Travelers had the beejeebies scared out of them during the encounter. Passenger Dallas Rueschoff told a reporter, “We were going sideways, up and down…we dropped a good few hundred feet at least.”  Or as a 787… Read More…

In the past I’ve referred to them as the kids who couldn’t get a date for the prom. Now, I bet the engineers at the British satellite communication company inmarsat will be the coolest kids of summer if the portion of an airplane found in Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean turns out to be from Malaysia Flight 370. Jonathan Sinnatt, director of corporate communications for inmarsat said the company is not making any comment – certainly not before a determination is made about whether the 6-foot long piece of what appears to be part of a wing, is actually from the missing Malaysia Boeing… Read More…

It’s an exciting possibility that a piece of Malaysia Flight 370 may have washed up on the beach in Reunion Island, 3700 miles across the Indian Ocean from Perth. What looks to be a piece of the wing is nine feet long and 3 feet wide.  A statement from the French air accident bureau says it is not possible yet to determine whether the part is from a Boeing 777 or Malaysia Flight 370. For months I’ve been wondering why the search for MH-370, has been entirely focused on the most difficult place to find the plane, under the storm-tossed South Indian Ocean. Why hasn’t… Read More…

>F-WWCF the Airbus A350 MSN #2 in Newark on Thursday The Airbus A350 XWB that flew into Newark Liberty International Airport this week on another stop on its tour of the Americas looked awfully pretty parked out on the ramp by Signature Aviation Services. But like many of us gals in the prep stage of a special event, one should not look too closely or the hairclips and Spanx might be visible.   That’s because this plane MSN #2, just one of two prototypes with a full cabin configuration, is still running a variety of tests. Is the cabin too humid? How are the structure… Read More…

>N671US in Shannon days ago. Photo courtesy Kevin Corry This just in: The Delta Air Lines Boeing 747 N664US which was heavily damaged by hail on a flight to Seoul Korea last month will return to the United States late this week but it appears her flying days are over. This Queen of the Sky, I am told, is headed for Marana Aerospace Solutions, a enormous boneyard for retired airliners north of Tucson, Arizona. For more on this story, read on. This post has been updated with more information about the process of taking an airliner out of desert storage. First its Arizona retirement was… Read More…

>N671US in Shannon Photo courtesy Kevin Corry The Boeing 747 taken out of the desert in Arizona to replace the Delta jumbo jet pelted by hail over China, has itself gone out of service, at least temporarily after an emergency landing in Ireland on Friday. Flightaware.com shows N671US back on the ground in Shannon after departing Amsterdam for New York.  The St. Paul Business Journal reported a smoke alarm triggered the emergency landing. There were 376 passengers on board. “Wow, just wow,” was the response I received from a Delta 747 pilot who has been watching the events unfold. He then turned his attention to… Read More…

>Photo by Brian Walker Armchair airline pilots may be asking why the crew of Delta Air Lines Flight 159 from Detroit to Seoul opted to fly through a hail storm on June 16th, rather than insist on an altitude deviation from air traffic control in China. The decision to maintain flight at 36,000 feet resulted in some dramatic looking damage to various parts of Delta’s Boeing 747 registration N664US and some shaken passengers – none of whom was injured. The answer seems to be that the crew was more concerned about possibly of flying into another aircraft having been told by Chinese controllers of traffic…. Read More…

When I travel I am often on my own so compact is best, especially since my Lenovo laptop and assorted techie accouterments alone need one entire (albeit small) backpack. So I was delighted to find that the portable, lightweight travel clothes washing machine sent to me by The Scrubba Wash Bag worked as billed. This product gets a free ride in my suitcase and starting position in my latest wrap-up of travel products for the aviation crowd. World’s First Packable Washing Machine The secret to packing spare is wearing things multiple times which means hand-washing, a manicure-wrecking, floor-soaking experience that I frankly don’t like. The Scrubba… Read More…