Happy New Year! I’ve compiled a list of the most popular posts of 2010 (some of which are from 2009!) for your reading pleasure. It’s a fun collection of photography, essays, news and even a link round-up on engine failure.

I hope you enjoy the articles and I look forward to sharing lots of new interesting posts with you in 2011.

Number Ten: Engine Failure After Take-Off

Engine Failure After Take-Off, commonly referred to as EFATO, is one of the most frightening events that can happen to a pilot. A recent incident hit International headlines when US Airways flight 1549 landed in the Hudson after a sudden loss of engine power. Every pilot has been trained to deal with EFATO but the reality of the situation has little in common with the practice runs when you have a competent instructor at your side with his hand on the throttle.

Engine Failure After Take-Off is a collection of links and news including first-person accounts, discussions of strategies and crash survivablilty and a YouTube video of a collision with a cow.

Number Nine: Military Jet Buzzing Santa Monica Pier

The plan was for the jets to do four passes off of the coast of the Santa Monica pier, west of a banner tow aircraft towing a banner for the film. The first passes went as planned and then one of the pilots broke away and flew low over the beach area for multiple passes in excess of 250 knots (two of the passes were below 500 feet) and then pulled into a steep climb just before the pier.

Military Jet Buzzing Santa Monica Pier was posted at the end of last year, the story of two military jets buzzing Santa Monica pier including a list of the specific violations. The same plane appeared in the viral “Close Call with Terrain” video which I also included in the post.

Number Eight: Cross Country Solo

I went for the heartfelt-plea approach. “It’s for my licence. I am a student, learning to fly. The paper is to say that I landed here without breaking any planes or causing any problems.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Did you break any planes?”

“No! I think – I think you’ll find that ATC are happy to sign it. I was told they wouldn’t mind. It has my name and the plane’s registration on it.”

Cross Country Solo is a three part series of my first navigation flight all alone. Actually, Part Two: Almería of this collection of three posts was the most popular for some reason, although the return to Axarquia was the most stressful leg! I’ve included all three in order to keep context.
Part One: Granada
Part Two: Almería
Part Three: Return to Axarquia

Number Seven: Grounded

I want to be up there, conquering the sky, a young man says, gazing out the window with undisguised yearning. I have to hide my confusion. There is no such colonialist desire in my heart, I have no visions of conquest. But then I think about his words again and realise that I’m wrong. It’s not the sky that I want to subdue, it is myself.

The popularity of Grounded surprised me. A deeply introspective piece, I was trapped in by the weather and explored my own feelings towards flying and what I hoped to achieve. The comments on this post are fascinating.

Number Six: Mike Newman Glider Accident

Amazingly pilot Mike Newman, 35, crawled out of the wreckage of the high performance Swift S-1 aircraft after the cockpit broke up on impact.

The former racing driver suffered three broken vertebrae in the accident, but doctors expect him to make a full recovery.

I was sitting in a pub in London when a friend mentioned a crash at Shoreham Air Show the day before. I went home to research the Mike Newman Glider Accident and found unbelievable photographs and video of the Swift S-1 wing-first into the runway. I collected the information into a single post with links to more detail. I may look at a follow-up to this piece.

Number Five: Pitch vs. Power: Landing Better

Like most PPLs, I was taught to use attitude to control airspeed and power to control height. However, the inertia of the Saratoga and its tendency to sink like a stone at low speed, combined with my inability to nudge the power gently enough to keep my pitch steady, can make this difficult. A bad approach can feel like a ship in heavy weather as I adjust the power back and forth to try to keep my perspective of the runway correct.

Pitch vs. Power: Landing Better was my attempt to explain a breakthrough I’d made flying the Saratoga. I understood the relationship between pitch and power in a text-book sort of way but it took longer to feel it in my gut.

Number Four: Snow on the Runway, Ice on the Wings

Funny, it seems that it’s somewhat quiet on the runways at most of the UK airfields. But as I am resigned to not flying anyway, I have to admit that some of the views today are just beautiful. Just linking the webcams doesn’t show you what I saw (and you have a high chance of seeing nothing but black sky at the Scottish airfields at this time of year!) so I’ve taken a set of screenshots to share with you.

The second popular piece I wrote whilst grounded due to weather, Snow on the Runway, Ice on the Wings was a series of screenshots from webcams around the UK. I did the same again a few weeks ago after the first serious snowfall of the season: UK Snow Day on Webcams.

Number Three: Drunk steals plane at airshow

I had to cover my eyes to watch this video the first time I was shown it. But then I kept peeking through my fingers.

I am continuously astounded by Franklin’s Flying Circus and I was thrilled when Kyle Franklin said he was happy for me to offer a streaming video of Drunk steals plane at airshow, previously only available as a downloaded wmv file. I’m thrilled to tell you that since then, he’s made a number of his videos available on YouTube via the Franklin’s Flying Circus Video Page.

Number Two: The Last Flight

He went to the airport and started the engine in his plane. It purred smoothly, with a low rumble and a promise of speedy high adventure. He taxied it across the ramp and down the taxiway to the end and near the runway. He ran the engine up to medium power while holding the brakes, but he resisted the temptation to go at high power down the runway and lift off into the sky. He returned to the ramp, tied the plane down and went home. Sadly unfulfilled, he returned again the next day, and the next. The routine of taxiing was repeated at higher and higher speeds but he would, each time, return and park the plane on the ramp.

I originally found The Last Flight posted by Max Grogan on BeechTalk.com and I knew I wanted to share it. He kindly gave me permission to include it as a guest post on Fear of Landing and gave me access to his photo albums as well. It’s no surprise to me that this is one of the most popular posts of 2010 and I hope Max continues to write about his aviation adventures.

Number One: FAA Approved?

So, the story goes that the Alaskan pilot had 2 new tires, three cases of speed tape and several rolls of cellophane delivered to the site and promptly repaired his plane so that he could fly it home.

In October 2009, I posted FAA Approved?, photographs of a Piper Supercub mauled by a bear. It was only a few weeks after the incident and at the time, I couldn’t find the photographs on the Web and details of the plane and the pilot were sparse. I posted everything I could find in hopes of getting more information and visits to Fear of Landing skyrocketed. In December, Alaska Dispatch posted the full story as told by the pilot’s father in An Appetite for Revenge.

So that’s a summary of 2010 with a bit of an overhang from 2009! I’m pleased to see that a variety of different posts – news round-ups, essays and accident reports – are all popular. I’ve been running this blog for four years now and it’s still a lot of fun, especially reading the comments!

So here’s to you: Happy New Year to every one and I hope we see more of each other in 2011!

After my first solo, that wondrous moment of suddenly feeling in control of the plane and realising that I could fly, dammit! I kicked into high gear.

There was only one week of the course left.

Desperate to catch up, I got up earlier and earlier, leaving my seven-year-old son fast asleep for the childminder to take to school, getting to the airfield as early as Oliver would meet me.

The weather turned bad. Oh, it was still sunny and hot but a grey haze descended over the horizon and the wind picked up, gusting along the runway. I needed more general handling practice before I could do my cross country solo but Oliver didn’t want me out in questionable conditions, struggling with the plane and the wind and losing my newfound confidence.

I sat at the airfield every day, hopeful to get a chance to fly. I even begged Oliver to meet me on Saturday, promising Connor a special day out, the chance to see where Mommy had been all week.

Connor loved the airfield. But the planes (and the fact that his Mommy was flying one of them!) interested him not at all. He’d met the 5-year-old daughter of the airfield manageress. The girl had been exploring the airfield ever since she’d learned to toddle and she was thrilled to show the older boy all the nooks and crannies. They climbed up the disused tower, poked around the old equipment, pointed at the enemy aircraft (my Cessna, still doing circuits) and shouted ratatatatatatata in an attempt to defend Spain. As the sun rose and the temperatures grew, she showed him where the garden hose was and dragged a small plastic pool out of a hangar. They filled it up and splashed, not bothering to take off their clothes, just happy for the cool water.

The summer heat was not so easily chased away from my point of view. We managed an hour in the morning but then the afternoon was unflyable again: the horizon lost in a grey murk of sea meshing into sky. “No good,” said Oliver, shaking his head sadly. “You won’t learn general handling without a horizon – it’s pointless. You can do another round of circuits, if you want.” I didn’t want, but it was better than not flying at all. I gradually became more despondent.

I did what I could, I finished the ground work, practised navigation, took the written exams. But to finish the PPL I had to prove myself in the air and time had run out. A week after my first solo, I still hadn’t left the airfield on my own and some days I wasn’t sure I was ever going to be able to.

On my final day, the sea was covered with whitecaps from the gusty winds. Oliver kept checking the wind sock and shaking his head. The others had done their time, the plane was free for me but we couldn’t do the general handling practice that I needed. Instead, I spent hours sitting at the big table by the bar, road maps of Spain in front of me, working out routes and windspeeds and time so that I could navigate my way around the local area.

When the examiner arrived, he was introduced to the other students and test flights were organised. I stayed out of the way.

That afternoon, we gathered in the bar, sitting at the low tables pushed against the wall. A group of old men sat in a row at the dining table, sipping small glasses of beer and watching the television. Occasionally one would comment, a brief sentence in a thick Andalucian accent. The others grumbled their assent and then silence fell back on the men until the next news story.

Oliver gave a chirpy “Hello!” every time he walked into the room, the mens’ heads all bobbed in a sort of soundless acknowledgement that he existed.

That had been the extent of our interaction until that day. We were collapsed along the long sofa, escaping the heat and nursing our water, when one of the men made an abrupt sound. Juan moved faster than I have ever seen, grabbing the remote from behind the bar to turn up the television. The images immediately took our attention: Wreckage of a small plane near a riverbed. The surroundings looked oddly familiar. Cliff translated the key facts into English for the others: A Cessna 172 had crashed the previous Friday, four dead, including an 8 year old girl. The reporter was standing with the airfield behind him – the plane I was flying showing in the corner of the shot.

Juan’s bloodshot eyes focused on Cliff. “One of ours,” he said in Spanish.

“One of your planes?”

“One of our pilots.”

No one knew the details yet –the instructor had taken his brother, his brother’s girlfriend and his girlfriend’s eight-year-old daughter for a local area flight. There was a loud sound and then plane plummeted to the ground, landing on private land no more than 50 metres from the airfield. Four fatalities.

We were silent, staring at the television long after the newscaster had moved on to other stories.

“This will not be good for Axarquia,” said Juan. I think it was the longest statement I had ever heard him make.

Meanwhile, Lee and Oliver planned their flights to England. All the other students had flown with the examiner and passed: they were now pilots. I struggled not to feel resentful. Oliver tried to cheer me up by having me trace their route over the map – across Spain for the first day’s flight and an overnight stay at San Sebastian. Then they would follow the coast of the Bay of Biscay until they reached Cherbourg in France. The last leg was the easiest but also included the dangerous water crossing: straight across the English Channel, past the Isle of Wight and then straight inland to Oxford. It sounded like a fascinating journey but it also meant the end of my “free” lessons tagging onto the others’ course. I knew the instructors were needed in England and everyone else had finished, but I was frustrated that I had come so close and yet still not good enough.

“You just need to come to Oxford,” Lee told me. “It’ll be good for you. You’re getting too used to radio silence. The south of England will wake you up for sure.” I stared down at my meteorology book. I was taking the written exam in an hour – at least my ground school would be finished. It didn’t seem much consolation.

And then, there was a phone call. “Change of plans,” Oliver called out as he breezed into the study room. Lee was going over the wind charts with me one more time. “We’re taking Papa Golf home together, Lee. Charlie Oscar is staying here.”

Lee yawned. “It is? Cool, you can fly Papa Golf and I’ll sleep.”

Oliver turned to me. “Yeah, we’re going to leave it here and I’m coming back next week. My sister’s got a place on the coast and she said she’ll put me up. I won’t have a car, you will have to pick me up every morning.”

“I will?” I didn’t follow.

“You will. Bright and early, every morning. We only have a fortnight, then I really have to take the plane back.”

I glanced down at the wind chart in my hand, as if it had answers. It suddenly seemed almost comprehensible compared to the conversation at hand. I looked up into Oliver’s bright smile.

“We’ve got two weeks get you flying.”

I opened my mouth and closed it again.

“I need to go home and sort out the paperwork and deal with some personal stuff. Then I’m coming back and we’ll do nothing but fly. We’ve got two weeks, then Tom wants the plane back. Preferably with you in it – ready to take your checkride. Think we can do it?”

“Two weeks.” After the stress of not being able to fit enough hours in, two weeks sounded like a lifetime – especially as I wouldn’t have to wait for my turn to use the Cessna each day.

“Yeah,” I said, finally answering his smile with one of my own. “Yeah, let’s do it.”

“Cool,” said Oliver. “But you have to finish your meteorology paper first. Focus!”

I focused.

I wrote previously about the Qantas flight QF32 Airbus A380 which made an emergency landing in Singapore last month.

Investigation: AO-2010-089 – Inflight engine failure – Qantas, Airbus A380, VH-OQA, overhead Batam Island, Indonesia, 4 November 2010

Following a normal takeoff, the crew retracted the landing gear and flaps. The crew reported that, while maintaining 250 kts in the climb and passing 7,000 ft above mean sea level, they heard two almost coincident ‘loud bangs’, followed shortly after by indications of a failure of the No 2 engine.

The investigation is still continuing but the initial issue, “an uncontained failure of the Intermediate Pressure turbine disc” has been identified.

Recent examination of components removed from the failed engine at the Rolls-Royce plc facility in Derby, United Kingdom, has identified the presence of fatigue cracking within a stub pipe that feeds oil into the High Pressure (HP) / Intermediate Pressure (IP) bearing structure. While the analysis of the engine failure is ongoing, it has been identified that the leakage of oil into the HP/IP bearing structure buffer space (and a subsequent oil fire within that area) was central to the engine failure and IP turbine disc liberation event.

Further examination of the cracked area has identified the axial misalignment of an area of counter‑boring within the inner diameter of the stub pipe; the misalignment having produced a localised thinning of the pipe wall on one side. The area of fatigue cracking was associated with the area of pipe wall thinning (Figure 1).

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau have released a Safety Recommendation to Rolls-Royce plc to address the safety issue. You can read the full recommendation and justification in the Recommendation tab of the report: Investigation: AO-2010-089 – Inflight engine failure – Qantas, Airbus A380, VH-OQA, overhead Batam Island, Indonesia, 4 November 2010

Meanwhile, the Royal Aeronautical Society have published an exclusive interview with Captain David Evans, who was in the observer’s seat when the incident occurred. The detail of the event and the crews reactions makes for a fascinating read:

EXCLUSIVE – Qantas QF32 flight from the cockpit | Aerospace Insight | The Royal Aeronautical Society

It was getting very confusing with the avalanche of messages we were getting. So the only course of action we have is the discipline of following the ECAM and dealing with each one as we came through with them. The engine shutdown was completed, the hydraulic systems were dealt with and then the next systems we were looking at were the loss of various flight controls. This was due to the degradation and the loss of some electrical buses, bus 1 and 2 had failed. Basically, just going through the ECAM actions, acknowledging them and working through the systems display to see what was working and was not.

The next thing we were dealing with was the fuel. We had some obvious leaks, some severe, out of the Engine 2 feedtank. We dispatched the second officer back to the cabin to have a look and there was a fairly significant fuel trail behind the aircraft – or fluid trail because at that stage we couldn’t determine whether it was hydraulic fluid or fuel. We were getting messages about imbalance, losing fuel out of one side and not the other. And those messages were some of the ECAM messages that we didn’t follow. We were very concerned the damage to the galleries, the forward and aft transfer galleries, whether they were intact, whether we should be transferring fuel. We elected not to.

The emphasis on the passengers really stands out, in my opinion:

I think most probably the most serious part of the whole exercise, when you think back at it, was the time on the runway after we’d stopped. Because we were very concerned and conscious of evacuating the aircraft using slides. We had 433 passengers onboard, we had elderly, we had wheelchair passengers, so the moment you start evacuating, you are going to start injuring people. So a lot of discussion was had on the flight deck about where was the safest place for the passengers? We’ve got a situation where there is fuel, hot brakes and an engine that we can’t shut down. And really the safest place was onboard the aircraft until such time as things changed. So we had the cabin crew with an alert phase the whole time through ready to evacuate, open doors, inflate slides at any moment. As time went by, that danger abated and, thankfully, we were lucky enough to get everybody off very calmly and very methodically through one set of stairs.

I recommend reading the full article which includes iPhone photographs of the cockpit instruments at the time of the failure and the crew’s view of the damage from the window.

Meanwhile, Ulf Waschbusch, who twittered the incident and posted photographs within a few hours of the landing, has booked a new flight with Qantas on the Airbus 380 for Chinese New Year 2011. Lets hope he makes it this time.

Our flight to Gatwick was cancelled so I spent the day peering at webcams all over the UK to see the status of the airfields. It’s great to see how many UK airfields have web cams showing the apron and the runway and even more so when you get to look at snow whilst sitting in sunny Spain. A couple of the cams were dark – either in the midst of a snowstorm or simply broken – but most of them showed blankets of snow across the landscape.

I took screenshots of each of the webcams, so you’ll see what I saw today. If you click through, you’ll get to the airfield site with the live webcam so you can see the current conditions.

Enjoy:

Bembridge, Isle of Wight	Cambridge
Cotswold (Kemble)	Aboyne, Aberdeenshire
Enstone	Glenforsa, Isle of Mull
Headcorn, Kent	Heathrow, London
Hollym, Withernsea	Jersey
Kirkwall, Orkney Islands	Leicestershire
Dunstable, Bedfordshire	Lydd, Kent
Milfield, Northumberland	Oxford
Portmoak, Scotlandwell	Sherburn, Yorkshire
Shoreham, West Sussex	Shropshire, West Midlands
Sumburgh, Shetland Isles	Ulster
Wellesbourne, Warwickshire	White Waltham, Berkshire

I’ve been sipping hot chocolate to warm myself just from looking at these webcams. Then I picked up my camera and went out to take photographs of the sun setting over the Spanish coast:

It’s a shame about the missed flight but I think I’ll live.

If you know of other airfield webcams that I’ve missed, leave them in the comments!