In a scenario right out of a horror movie, pilots and airline employees battled an apparently murderous first officer on a FlyDubai jet to Tel Aviv in a 17-minute ordeal in the sky over Saudi Arabia on Wednesday.  It appears to have been an attempt to hijack or crash the airplane by the first officer, at the time of this writing, identified only by his nationality as an Omani. The pilot in command of Flight 1073, Capt. Smit Machchhar was apparently stabbed by the Omani as the first officer tried to take control of the flight. The melee began an hour and 20-minutes after takeoff… Read More…

Amazon 767 landing WAY too fast and late at MIA right before it overran the runway by u/AreYouCereal32 in aviation Before Air 21 Flight 7598 even touched down on the runway at Miami International Airport on Sunday afternoon, there had been repeated warnings that the airplane was not stabilized. In a summary of the cockpit voice recorder released by the National Transportation Safety Board on Wednesday, the pilot not flying cautioned that the plane was flying too fast. The pilot flying “made additional comments regarding the aircraft’s excessive speed throughout the remainder of the recording,” according to the NTSB’s recap. The pilot monitoring did not… Read More…

NOTE TO READERS: One point I neglected to include in this post but ought to have (working too late into the night) is the limited amount of time either pilot had on the 767. The captain qualified on the 767 in May and the first officer in April of 2025, making him the more experienced pilot on this particular airplane. At age 55 the captain had 7145 hours total flight time. The first officer 2500 hours. The CVR will be discussed by NTSB today, following their interviews with the crew. The NTSB released a video of the excursion which you will find at the end… Read More…

Five people are dead, five more injured and a swath of Miami International Airport is “devastation” following Sunday’s crash of Amazon Air Flight 7598. There is video of the Boeing 767 widebody touching down, far beyond the threshold and careening into cars and a fence. Investigators were able to retreive and send off to the lab in Washington DC, the airplanes black boxes. Both pilots of Flight 7598 survived along with five of the 10 people in two vehicles hit by the plane. The cargo jet appears to have landed farther down the runway than expected, with insufficient pavement remaining. It then crashed across an… Read More…

Note to readers: From 2001 to 2008, I worked as an air accident investigator for Kreindler & Kreindler. I was not assigned to the Pan Am 103 case.  It is all well and good to focus on the bad guys responsible for the 1988 downing of Pan Am 103. In the recently released Netflix limited series, filmmakers make it clear how crime fighters determined the government of Libya and its agents produced a bomb and concealed it in a suitcase that would be boarded onto the Boeing 747 bound for New York. Flight 103 departed London on December 21, 1988 and exploded over Scotland killing… Read More…

Fellow lovers of the #windowseat, I’ve got some news. The decision to have the shade up or down may not be entirely yours.  Even I write these words the subject is achieving virality. This is due to a video posted online and a report on the aviation aficionados’ news website, View From The Wing. The story begins with a selfie video posted to Instagram . It is the as-it-happened-account @ohhhnyny but let’s caller her, Ms. Window Seat. In the video she is being debriefed by a flight attendant who reportedly removed her from the plane for not raising the shade to accommodate the request of… Read More…

If you know anything about the popular DnB performer Bou, you’ll know the UK musician and composer is known for frenetic dance music that is a creative blend of electronic and IRL sounds. But, if you stopped reading this post to do a quick Google (go ahead, I’ll wait) you will learn the Algerian-born, Manchester resident with the full name Amine Bouguenna, is fond of unlikely collaborations.  And of these, perhaps none is as unexpected as his latest partner on the Las Vegas stage, British Airways flight attendant Sophie Bunker. On August 5th, the day before his gig at We All Scream in Vegas, Bou… Read More…

PART ONE As more information emerges from the potential collision of the President’s military helicopter with a commercial airliner in Washington Wednesday, this is worth noting. It is the fourth investigation launched in less than two years by the National Transportation Safety Board in which military operations created hazards for commercial flights. In 2 of the 3 events where a probable loss of separation between military aircraft and commercial flights was the issue, the worst did not happen. Having the Presidential helicopter in the latest episode certainly ratchets up the visibility of the problem. I’ll be writing about the latest event today, and the others… Read More…

Longevity itself can make a death notable, but the passing of two people in aviation this month is worth our attention not just how long they lived but for what they did with the years God gave to them. Azreil (aka) Al Blackman, whose 80 year career as an airplane mechanic is a Guinness World Record, was 96 when he set down his wrench in 2022. He died a week ago, shortly after his 100th birthday. His  career in aviation started at the age of 16 when he landed an apprentice position at American Export Airlines in New York. When the airline was acquired by… Read More…

Friday marks thirty years since a TWA flight from New York to Paris exploded after takeoff from John F. Kennedy Airport, killing everyone on board. With hindsight, we can see this was the disaster that predicted more Boeing design flaws, more accidents and more lives lost and by that I refer to the Boeing 737, 737NG, 737 Max and 787 Dreamliner. On July 17, 1996, a TWA Boeing 747 was split in two by a blast in its center fuel tank. It jettisoned the front of the airplane downward into the Atlantic, and tipped the aft end upward where its wings broke off in ascent,… Read More…