**This is an old revision of the document!**
Table of Contents
Aviation
Created Monday 04 November 2013
See also: Transportation
Articles
**At these 10 thrilling airports, landing is part of the adventure**
**FAA Grounds All Cirrus Vision Jets over Angle of Attack Issues**
Emergency AD supersedes an earlier service bulletin.
By Rob Mark 19 April 2019
**Here's What Happened To The Soviet Ground Effect Sea Monsters**
Elizabeth Blackstock, 26 December 2019
Back in the 1960s, Soviet Union leader Nikita Khrushchev claimed there was a secret project going on deep in the country. It had a ship—this half-plane, half-boat contraption—that was capable of breaking the land speed records of the era while carrying an unprecedented amount of cargo. These projects were called Ekranoplans, and here’s why this technology just never caught on.
https://jalopnik.com/heres-what-happened-to-the-soviet-ground-effect-sea-mon-1840659111
United Airlines
**‘Very close’ Qantas jets came within 800m of each other**
By Steve Creedy January 16, 2020
The captain of a Qantas Airbus A330 told air traffic controllers that another Qantas jet undertaking a missed approach on the same runway came “very close” during an incident at Sydney Airport in August
The Airbus A330 involved in the August 5, 2019, incident was taking off on runway 34 Right as a Boeing 737-800 landing on the same runway was instructed by air traffic control to perform a go-around.
https://www.airlineratings.com/news/close-qantas-jets-came-within-800m/
**Video: Iranian jet carrying 130 passengers skids off runway, comes to a stop on a crowded city street**
By Shawn Langlois Published: Jan 27, 2020 1:33 a.m. ET
An Iranian passenger plane with 130 people on board skidded off the runway in the Iranian city of Mahshahr on Sunday, Al-Arabiya reported, as onlookers captured video footage that quickly went viral across social media.
Hellish Copters
**Why are choppers always crashing?**
By Christopher Beam Oct 30, 2009 5:36 PM
The Coast Guard and Navy are searching for nine people after a military helicopter collided with a U.S. Coast Guard plane off the coast of San Diego on Thursday evening. An Army helicopter crashed in western Afghanistan on Monday, the same day that two American helicopters in southern Afghanistan smashed into each other. Why are helicopters always crashing?
Because they’re used in risky operations. Most airplanes operate in a controlled environment of runways, set flight paths, and air traffic controllers. Helicopters, by contrast, are used to reach areas you can’t access by plane. They can land pretty much anywhere, which makes them useful for military operations, search and rescue, medical evacuations, and other dangerous missions. As a result, conditions can be unpredictable. Helicopters are more vulnerable than planes to bad weather. In war zones, helicopters are easier to shoot down than planes. And they fly lower to the ground—a helicopter’s maximum altitude without requiring pressurization is about 12,000 feet—making them more likely to encounter obstacles like buildings or hills that suddenly appear in the fog. (It doesn’t help that in emergency situations, the pilot is in a hurry.) Because of their primary uses, helicopters also tend to take off and land a lot more than planes; the vast majority of accidents in any aircraft occur during takeoffs and landings.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2009/10/why-are-helicopters-always-crashing.html
**'Patient zero' in cyberattack on UN aviation agency was senior official's son, email reveals**
Following CBC report on coverup of hack at Montreal-based ICAO, whistleblower accuses top brass of misconduct
Debra Arbec · CBC News · Posted: Jul 25, 2019 4:00 AM ET | Last Updated: July 25, 2019
A United Nations whistleblower has revealed that forensic investigators looking into the most serious cyberattack in the history of the Montreal-based International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) traced the source of the breach to the laptop of the ICAO council president's son.
Almost five months after CBC News reported an attempt by four members of ICAO's information technology team to cover up its mishandling of the cyberattack, Vincent Smith — ICAO's director of the bureau of administration and services — is going public with accusations of misconduct against ICAO Secretary General Fang Liu and the agency's council president, Olumuyiwa Benard Aliu.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/icao-patient-zero-cyberattack-whistleblower-1.5223883
**With Help From A Storm, A British Airways 747 Just Broke The Subsonic Trans-Atlantic Record**
Max Finkel - 9 February 2020 1:05PM
As Storm Ciara causes flooding and transportation delays across Britain, at least some are finding the weather rather agreeable as the winds from the storm helped British Airways flight BA112 cross the Atlantic in a record time of four hours and 56 minutes.
According to plane-tracking website FlightRadar, the Boeing 747-436 departed John F. Kennedy International Airport at 6:21 PM New York time last night and arrived more than 80 minutes ahead of schedule in Heathrow at 4:47 AM GMT.
https://jalopnik.com/with-help-from-a-storm-a-british-airways-747-just-brok-1841557907
**Home – Serving the Flight Tracking Enthusiast**
Welcome to ADSBexchange.com, a co-op of ADS-B/Mode S/MLAT feeders from around the world, and the world’s largest source of unfiltered flight data. Thanks to our worldwide community of participants, if the data is broadcast over the air, you can find it here. This opens up a whole new world of interesting traffic for hobbyists, without materially affecting security for anyone.
In fact, ADS-B Exchange is proud to collaborate with C4ADS to support its mission to produce data-driven reporting to understand, prevent, and mitigate global c4logoblackconflict. This partnership will yield more receivers in interesting and unusual global locations, ADS-B Exchange will have wider coverage and C4ADS will have more data to enhance their mission.
Why we're focusing on Regional Air Mobility
Lilium Blog - 24.07.2020
Remo Gerber, our Chief Operating Officer, on why we don't plan to operate flights under 20km, and why that's a good thing.
The idea of ‘urban air mobility’ is pretty well ingrained in most people’s minds. It’s futuristic flying cars that hop around a city, perhaps taking off from a garden, before stopping at the local shops and then dropping the kids off at school.
Of course, the reality is very different.
Taking a short hop from Lower Manhattan to Grand Central Station in New York, or from the English Garden in Munich to the main station, is not only impractical (you’d need hundreds of landing pads in one city) but it won’t actually save you any time as you’ll likely need to travel to and from the vertiport as well as check-in for your journey.
https://lilium.com/newsroom-detail/why-regional-air-mobility
**Fly with me**
Jet-age glamour was more than just aesthetic: its promise of motionless movement reshaped perception of time and space
Vanessa R Schwartz is professor of art history and history at the University of Southern California, where she directs the Visual Studies Research Institute and its graduate certificate programme. Her latest books are Jet Age Aesthetic: The Glamour of Motion in Motion (2020) and Getting the Picture: The Visual Culture of the News (2015), co-edited with Jason Hill.
Brought to you by Curio, an Aeon partner
Edited by Sam Dresser
In October 1958, Pan American Airways began its first regular jet service across the Atlantic. Compared with other forms of travel, flying was already fast. In 1946, it took around 20 hours to fly from New York to Paris, as opposed to the four-and-a-half days to cross the Atlantic by ocean liner. But Pan Am’s new jet-powered Boeing 707, moving at an unprecedented speed of 500 to 600 miles per hour, cut transatlantic travel time to a mere seven hours (about the length it remains today).
The jet’s incredible speed seemed to some to embody the historical moment. As one author put it in 1959: ‘Every aspect of our time is marked by movement … the aircraft is the most eloquent symbol of this transformation.’ In January 1958, Frank Sinatra’s album Come Fly with Me was released, with a cover that prompted the silver-tongued singer to complain (understandably) that it looked like a poster advertisement for Trans World Airlines (TWA). The album featured travel-themed songs and lyrics referencing a host of far-flung places (Hawaii, Paris and Capri), while never mentioning how fast you could get there. Instead, the title song promised the lovers would ‘float down to Peru’ and ‘just glide, starry-eyed’. Come Fly with Me emphasised the quality of the jet’s movement: barely perceptible, natural and easy. It would be a fitting anthem for an era – roughly the mid-1950s to the end of the 1960s – that’s come to be known as the jet age.
https://aeon.co/essays/digital-culture-built-on-the-seamless-speed-of-the-jet-age
Did this airliner land in the North Sea? No. So what happened? El Reg probes flight tracker site oddity
All is well. Unless you trust everything you see on the internet
Fri 18 Sep 2020 / 14:26 UTC - Gareth Corfield
An airliner that appeared to crash into the North Sea earlier this week in fact landed safely. Yet multiple flight tracker websites showed it spiralling into the ocean. Experts have explained to The Register what really happened.
It began when Reg reader Ross noticed that a flight scheduled to land at Aberdeen on Tuesday 15 September had not arrived. Upon looking at several popular flight tracking websites, he found that the aircraft – an Avro RJ / BAe 146 four-engined regional airliner – seemed to have crashed around 75 miles (121km) south of the Scottish airport.
https://www.theregister.com/2020/09/18/flight_tracking_adsb_oddity_ins_drift/
Echoes: Airplane Pilot
vendredi 09 octobre 2020
So, a bit more thank 18 months ago, I started a new adventure. After a few flights with a friend of mine in a Robin DR400 and Jodel aircrafts, I enlisted in a local flight club at the Lognes airfield (LFPL), and started a Pilot Private License training. A PPL is an international flight license for non commercial operations. Associated with a qualification like the SEP (Single Engine Piston), it enables you to fly basically anywhere in the world (or at least anywhere where French is spoken by the air traffic controllers) with passengers, under Visual Flight Rules (VFR).
Windsock: everything you need to know about windsocks
Holland Aviation - ??
No doubt that you’ve seen a windsock before. But it would surprise you how little is known about what it actually is and what it’s used for. We’re happy to explain that to you! At the end of this article you will know everything about windsocks and their use worldwide!
What is a windsock?
A windsock, as we know it today, is a conically shaped tube made of woven textile which is used to measure both wind direction and speed.
https://www.hollandaviation.nl/en/windsock-everything-you-need-to-know-about-windsocks/
Concrete Arrows and the U.S. Airmail Beacon System
Dec 4, 2013
Scattered across the United States are a network of mysterious concrete arrows. They are often found in remote locations or areas difficult to access. Some will be accompanied by a small shack, a few have a metal tower affixed to their base. Many are in good condition while others have succumbed to nature. The shape and direction of the arrows vary, but it is clear they served the same purpose.
The purpose was important: helping early pilots navigate U.S. transcontinental flights at night.
In a era before radar, pilots used ground-based landmarks for guidance. This solution worked for flight during the day, but grounded pilots at night. Before long, a system of beacons was established across the United States to guide airmail pilots around-the-clock. When radar and radio communications made the beacons obsolete years later, most were torn down or abandoned.
https://sometimes-interesting.com/2013/12/04/concrete-arrows-and-the-u-s-airmail-beacon-system/
Radio Frequency fingerprinting of aircraft ADS-B transmitters? Boffins reckon they've cracked it
More data points needed, says academic, but technique could give governments a spoofin' bad headache
Gareth Corfield - Tue 11 Nov 2020 / 19:58 UTC
A group of academics reckon they've found a way to uniquely fingerprint aeroplanes’ Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) tracking transmitters – though an aviation infosec boffin says more research is needed to verify the new technique.
In a paper titled “Real-World ADS-B signal recognition based on Radio Frequency Fingerprinting,” three Chinese researchers describe what they said was a method of identifying unique transmitters fitted to aircraft – regardless of what identity code the equipment is broadcasting.
“We propose and design a novel RFF recognition scheme based on Contour Stellar Images and deep learning. We designed an ADS-B original signal capture and labelling method and verified this method by using a 1090MHz baseband signal collected by RTL-SDR, collecting signals from a total of 5 aircraft,” wrote the researchers in their paper [PDF].
https://www.theregister.com/2020/11/10/adsb_fingerprinting_research/
British Airways Flight 5390
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Incident
Date 10 June 1990
Summary Explosive decompression due to faulty maintenance
Site Didcot, Oxfordshire, England
51°36′21″N 1°14′27″WCoordinates: 51°36′21″N 1°14′27″W
Aircraft
Aircraft type BAC One-Eleven 528FL
Aircraft name County of South Glamorgan
Operator British Airways
IATA flight No. BA5390
ICAO flight No. BAW5390
Call sign SPEEDBIRD 5390
Registration G-BJRT
Flight origin Birmingham Airport, England
Destination Málaga Airport, Spain
Occupants 87
Passengers 81
Crew 6
Fatalities 0
Injuries 2
Survivors 87 (all)
British Airways Flight 5390 was a flight from Birmingham Airport in England for Málaga Airport in Spain that suffered explosive decompression, with no loss of life, shortly after takeoff on 10 June 1990. An improperly installed windscreen panel separated from its frame, causing the plane's captain to be blown partially out of the aircraft. With the captain pinned against the window frame for twenty minutes, the first officer landed at Southampton Airport.
Jet Hits Bear on Alaska Runway
Rhett Jones - 15 November 2020 10:55AM
For decades, people have wondered who would win in a battle of jetliner vs. bear. Over the weekend, we finally got an answer, and it might just break your heart.
On Saturday night, a Boeing 737-700 hit a brown bear on the runway at the Yakutat Airport in Eastern Alaska, Anchorage Daily News reports. According to the local outlet, ground crews followed proper procedures to check the runway before an Alaska Airlines flight touched down. But at the last minute, the pilots saw two bears crossing in the plane’s path. Alaska Airlines said that the pilot “felt an impact” and a brown bear sow was later discovered lying dead about 20 feet from the center of the runway.
https://gizmodo.com/jet-hits-bear-on-alaska-runway-1845687685
Photos reveal how much flying has changed since its ‘Golden Age’
Published Mon, Nov 30 20203:24 AM EST / Updated Mon, Nov 30 20208:10 AM EST - Monica Buchanan Pitrelli
Commercial air travel has come a long way since the “Golden Age of Travel” — an era marked by glamour, gourmet food and dapper passengers.
While complaints about smaller seats and expensive tickets are rife today, a look into the history of commercial aviation shows that today’s customer experience may not be as bad as some believe.
While seats are undeniably smaller, aircraft safety, speed, ticket prices and inflight entertainment have improved — a fact to keep in mind while perusing photographs of commercial aircraft from the past.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/30/historic-airline-photos-from-golden-age-of-travel.html
The Naval Bombing Experiments: An Account of the Bombing
Published in the U.S. Air Service - October, 1921
By Captain A.W. Johnson, USN
Commanding Atlantic Fleet Air Force During All Bombing Tests
Note for Naval Historical Foundation
In this account of the bombing, I left out all psychological factors, controversies, and references to Billy Mitchell
Published in U.S. Air Service
October, 1921
LESSONS FROM THE BOMBING – A NAVY VIEW
By Captain A.W. Johnson, USN Commanding Atlantic Fleet Air Force –
In Command of the Fleet Air Force During All Bombing Tests
The bombing exercises last June and July, which ended with the sinking of the Ostfriesland, furnished lessons of great value, if properly applied. It has been suggested that I tell my ideas regarding the bombing experiments as my duties placed me in a position to know all the details concerning them. I feel that I can discuss them without prejudice and perhaps throw some light upon what seems to be a much misunderstood subject.
Whether the exercise may be considered to have been entirely successful or not depends on the point of view. Many persons believed that a battleship could not be sunk by aircraft, others declared that a $20,000 airplane could sink a $40,000,000 battleship and that battleships were therefore useless. There were enthusiasts who believed any large bomb dropped on the deck of a ship would completely obliterate her, and there were skeptics who believed that bombing by aircraft was so erratic that they never could hit a ship at sea.
Spirit Airlines plane skids off taxiway at BWI Airport
By Tina Burnside, Leslie Holland and Eric Levenson, CNN - Updated 4:19 PM ET, Thu December 17, 2020
(CNN)A Spirit Airlines plane skidded off the taxiway at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport on Thursday morning after a powerful winter storm created slick conditions.
Field Sutton, spokesman with Spirit Airlines, told CNN that Flight 696 from Las Vegas to BWI landed safely, but the plane slid off the taxiway while heading to the terminal. Sutton said the front wheel slid into the grass area.
No passengers were injured, Sutton said. All 111 people on the plane are safe and were transported by bus to the terminal.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/17/us/spirit-airlines-runway-skid/index.html
BUSIEST ROUTES RIGHT NOW
SEE THE WORLD'S BUSIEST INTERNATIONAL AND DOMESTIC ROUTES
View and interrogate OAG’s ever popular Busiest Routes whenever you need as they evolve and change over time. Including the Top 10 Busiest Global Routes, Top 10 Domestic Routes and International Routes by region. Data powered by Schedules Analyzer.
Everything We Know About The Mysterious Dark Helicopters That Have Been Circling Los Angeles
The dark gray helicopters with no readily identifiable markings and unusual antennas have caught people's attention as they zip around Los Angeles.
By Joseph Trevithick - January 13, 2021
Yesterday, plane spotters in the greater Los Angeles area caught glimpses of three mysterious Bell 407 helicopters painted overall in what looks to be a dark gray color, but with no easily identifiable markings. Covered in antennas that one might expect to see on examples in use by military or law enforcement units, but unlike any we at The War Zone are familiar with, the sightings immediately caught our attention. While we don't know for sure who is operating them or for what purpose, these helicopters appear to have a very unusual history and there are solid indications that they could be associated with a very secretive U.S. military aviation unit.
Chris Shaw of Shaw’s Aviation Photography was among the first to spot the trio as they arrived at Bob Hope Airport, also known as Hollywood Burbank Airport or KBUR, which is situated just north of Los Angeles, on Jan. 12, 2021. Later that day, plane spotter Scott Lowe caught a glimpse of two of the helicopters leaving that airport.
Do you use Emacs Lisp as a general purpose programming language? (self.emacs)
submitted 17 February 2021 * by homomorphic-padawan
Early '90s, after “Die Wende” and the unification of East and West Germany. I was the person that got sent to the tough jobs, or the ones that nobody else wanted, so I found myself one Monday morning checking in at a DASA plant (DASA was first German Aerospace, then Daimler Aerospace, and now a part of Airbus). The project was between DASA and HP as main contractors to replace both countries' ATC systems with a unified one. So we have two megacompanies and a government contract, and shops like my employer getting some juicy partial jobs. And there are actually two Emacs stories in here.
First: that Monday morning, I check in with the developers that I'm supposed to help out. They are in a lab surrounded with wonderful stuff - the newest HP workstations on HP/UX, and a bunch of HP's top-of-the-range servers, fridge sized and close to 7 figures list price. The reason I got called in though: they couldn't work on the systems. They were VMS developers, pulled off a different project, and supposed to code up some part of the whole system (I forgot which one) in C on VMS (a truly gross idea, because C was not very well adapted to VMS, but that's a different thing). Anyway, they got their workstations, manuals, were told that vi was the editor, and have a nice day.
Here we are: a dozen people struggling to type code in Vi. And it's not that they were stupid, but muscle memory for the VMS editor (TPU, IIRC, but this is a long time ago) does really not translate well to Vi.
https://old.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/lly7po/do_you_use_emacs_lisp_as_a_general_purpose/gnvzisy/
Out of thin air: the mystery of the man who fell from the sky
In 2019, the body of a man fell from a passenger plane into a garden in south London. Who was he?
by Sirin Kale - Thu 15 Apr 2021 01.00 EDT
It was Sunday 30 June 2019, a balmy summer’s afternoon, and Wil, a 31-year-old software engineer, was lounging on an inflatable airbed outside his house in Clapham, south-west London. He wore pyjamas and drank Polish beer. As he chatted to his housemate in the sunshine, planes on their way to Heathrow airport made their final approach overhead. On his phone, Wil showed his housemate an app that tells users the route and model of any passing plane. He tested the app on one plane, and then held his phone up again, shielding his eyes from the sun and squinting into the sky.
Then he saw something falling. “At first I thought it was a bag,” he said. “But after a few seconds it turned into quite a large object, and it was falling fast.” Maybe a piece of machinery had fallen from the landing gear, he thought, or a suitcase from the cargo hold. But then he half-remembered an article he had read years before, about people stowing away on planes. He didn’t want to believe it, but as the object got nearer and nearer, it became impossible to deny. “In the last second or two of it falling, I saw limbs,” said Wil. “I was convinced that it was a human body.”
Why aviation’s compass is shifting towards True navigation
By David Learmount - 21 October 2021
While professional mariners stopped using the earth’s magnetic field as their primary directional reference some 50 years ago, civil aviation did not, because at that time accurate inertial navigation systems (INS) were too heavy and bulky for aircraft use.
Today, however, navigation by global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) – backed up by ring laser gyro-stabilised INS/attitude and heading reference system platforms, radio beacons and air traffic control surveillance using multiple technologies – means that aviation has no real need to use a magnetic reference.
Move over, Netflix. Move over, everything. Hundreds of thousands of people are watching planes land at Heathrow amid extraordinary high winds.
Published: Feb. 18, 2022 at 8:45 a.m. ET - Barbara Kollmeyer
Planespotter Jerry Dyer is the hero of Heathrow on Friday
“That was nuts, man.” “Oh, bosh! “Get it down mate — yeaaaah!”
Planespotter Jerry Dyer from Big Jet TV became a minor celebrity Friday, as he live-streamed jets trying to land at London’s Heathrow Airport for his YouTube channel.
The southern half of England was under rare “red” warnings for danger and flooding amid wind gusts of up to 80 miles an hour, as Storm Eunice, which has already wreaked havoc in Scotland, barreled in. Continental Europe has experienced similar storm events, with flooding in parts of Germany.
Elusive Plane Puzzled European Air Defenses, Then Its Crew Vanished
The anonymous plane is making headlines for its mysterious expedition, and European air defenders still aren’t exactly sure what to make of it.
Emma Helfrich - Jun 10, 2022 7:51 PM
An unidentified aircraft flew through airspaces belonging to multiple countries, almost all of them NATO members, without any official dispatch or approved flight plan. The illegal journey, which began in Lithuania, was monitored closely by all nations involved without any communication from the pilot. The plane was eventually found in Bulgaria covered in canvas without any trace of its crew.
The plane is reported to have initially departed from an undisclosed airport in Lithuania and then proceeded to fly over Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Serbia, and Romania before entering Bulgaria through the northern city of Vidin. With the exception of Serbia, all of the nations are part of the NATO alliance.
The plane reportedly finally landed in a small abandoned Bulgarian airfield known as the Targovishte Airport near the village of Buhovtsi between Targovishte and Shumen. The airport is purported to have not accepted a plane for many years, and locals have begun utilizing it in the summer months for agricultural purposes. European news source Euractiv states that when the plane was discovered, its engine was still warm.
What it's like to land on the world's shortest commercial runway
Nicola Chilton, CNN - 8th July 2022
(CNN) — Flying into Saba isn't for the faint hearted. The vertiginous slopes and sea cliffs of this five-square-mile island in the Caribbean don't leave much space to land a plane. But Juancho E. Yrausquin Airport, clinging to Saba's only bit of flat land, is proof that it can be done.
With a strip of asphalt just 1,300 feet long (about 400 meters), only 900 feet of which are “usable,” the runway is not much longer than an aircraft carrier.
Sheer drops into the sea at either end add an extra layer of excitement to the arrival on what is acknowledged as being the shortest commercial runway in the world.
Juancho E. Yrausquin Airport is something of a holy grail for avgeeks, but it is also a lifeline for Saba, bringing in tourists and taking out locals in need of medical attention.
The runway appears on one of Saba's postage stamps, and the souvenir shop in the village of Windwardside sells T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan, “I survived the Saba landing!”
You could take the ferry to get here, but the flight often appears in lists of the “world's scariest landings,” and that seems reason enough to give it a try.
https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/saba-airport-shortest-commercial-runway/index.html
AeroVanti Air Club wants to disrupt private aviation with its sleek turboprops
Frederic Lardinois@fredericl / 9:49 AM PDT•July 21, 2022
Chartering a private plane is never going to be cheap, no matter how many startups have promised to make it more affordable over the years. But that doesn’t mean it can’t become cheaper. AeroVanti Air Club, which is announcing a $9.75 million Series A fundraising round led by Network1 Financial Securities, is betting on the rather distinct Piaggio P.180 Avanti turboprop (you can see where the company name comes from), to offer lower hourly rates for its club members.
Membership fees start at $1,000 per month for an individual membership, $1,500 per month for a family membership and $2,500 for corporate memberships. Hourly rates start at $2,495, about half of what even the most affordable WheelsUp flight will set you back. There are no repositioning fees.
NAS Animated Storyboard
Secrets of the Sky
Belarus
Baltic airlines reroute flights to avoid Belarus airspace
2021.05.24 11:20
The Latvian airline AirBaltic has rerouted several flights leaving from Riga in order to avoid flying over Belarus following Sunday's incident where a Vilnius-bound flight was forced to land in Minsk.
“Yesterday, when mixed information was received about the diverted commercial flight to Minsk, as an immediate action, AirBaltic decided to avoid entering Belarus airspace until the situation becomes clearer or a decision is issued by the authorities,” Alise Briede, a spokeswoman for AirBaltic, informed LRT.lt on Monday.
According to the statement, the the flights BT410 from Riga to Odessa in Ukraine and BT724 from Riga to Tbilisi in Georgia were rerouted to avoid entering Belarus airspace.
O'Leary: Forced landing in Belearus was 'state-sponsored hijacking'
Stephen McNeice - 08.24 24 May 2021
The airline's CEO says it appears authorities removed a journalist and his travelling companion from the plane, while the company also believes there were some KGB agents on board the flight.
The plane - which was flying from Greece to Lithuania - was escorted by a Belarusian fighter jet after reports it had explosives on board, but none were found.
It was forced to divert from Minsk, where an opposition blogger - Roman Protasevich - was arrested.
European leaders will discuss a response to the incident today, after several officials called it “utterly unacceptable”.
https://www.newstalk.com/news/oleary-forced-landing-in-belarus-was-state-sponsored-hijacking-1199561
'They say code is red': transcript of controller telling plane to land in Minsk
Gabrielle Tétrault-farber and Andrew Osborn - May 25, 20218:33 AM PDT
A Ryanair pilot who landed his plane in Belarus on Sunday repeatedly questioned information about an alleged bomb threat, before ultimately agreeing to land in Minsk, according to a transcript released on Tuesday by authorities in Belarus.
Belarus scrambled a warplane to escort the flight, which was en route from Greece to Lithuania. When the plane landed in Minsk, Belarusian authorities arrested a dissident journalist. Western countries have described the incident as a hijacking or piracy.
The transcript released on Tuesday differs from excerpts previously released by Belarus state TV, which had attributed some of the pilot's remarks to the controller. State TV had pointed to its version to argue that the pilot had asked to land in Minsk, rather than that the controller had advised him to do so.
As Anger Toward Belarus Mounts, Recall the 2013 Forced Landing of Bolivia's Plane to Find Snowden
What Belarus did, while illegal, is not unprecedented. The dangerous tactic was pioneered by the same U.S. and E.U. officials now righteously condemning it.
Glenn Greenwald - May 24, 2021
U.S. and E.U. governments are expressing outrage today over the forced landing by Belarus of a passenger jet flying over its airspace on its way to Lithuania. The Ryanair commercial jet, which took off from Athens and was carrying 171 passengers, was just a few miles from the Lithuanian border when a Belarusian MiG-29 fighter jet ordered the plane to make a U-turn and land in Minsk, the nation's capital.
On board that Ryanair flight was a leading Belarusian opposition figure, 26-year-old Roman Protasevich, who, fearing arrest, had fled his country in 2019 to live in exile in neighboring Lithuania. The opposition figure had traveled to Athens to attend a conference on economics with Belarus’ primary opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya and was attempting to return home to Lithuania when the plane was forcibly diverted.
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/as-anger-toward-belarus-mounts-recall
Germany-Russia flights resume after air traffic suspension
Flights between Germany and Russia are back on after a brief suspension earlier on Wednesday in an an apparent tit-for-tat move.
Flights between Germany and Russia resumed later on Wednesday after both countries suspended airline connections in an apparent tit-for-tat move as a part of diplomatic spat over Belarus.
German airline Lufthansa told news agency AFP that the Russian authorities had finally granted it clearance for passenger flights to Russia in June.
“That means Lufthansa flights to Moscow and Saint Petersburg can be operated as planned,” said a spokeswoman for the airline.
In Russia, Mikhail Poluboyarinov, chief executive of Aeroflot told the TASS news agency: “Everything is fine, we have received all the authorizations.”
And another Russian airline, S7, said it too had received clearance for its flights to land in Germany.
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-russia-flights-resume-after-air-traffic-suspension/a-57757954
Flight Simulator
The Hostile Takeover of a Microsoft Flight Simulator Server
A community of air traffic control roleplayers gets torn apart by a lawsuit, and the founders scatter, trying to pick up the pieces.
AJ Dellinger - 05.26.2021 07:00 AM
It's a peaceful evening in the sky above O'Hare International Airport in Chicago. The air is still, barely a hint of clouds overhead. Visibility extends for miles. Conditions are perfect for flight. In fact, air traffic control just gave a pilot word that they are clear for takeoff. The sky’s the limit, it would seem. But the controller isn't seated at O'Hare, and neither is the pilot. They are located thousands of miles apart, brought together by a Discord channel and a multiplayer server for Microsoft Flight Simulator, both operated by a bustling community known as fsATC, or flight simulator air traffic control.
Formed in the summer of 2019, fsATC is one of a number of communities that have cropped up around flight simulators with the goal of keeping the game as realistic as possible.
https://www.wired.com/story/hostile-takeover-microsoft-flight-simulator/
Flight Data
Student who tracks Elon Musk's jet blasts sale of flight-tracking site he uses to keep tabs on aircraft
Taylor Rains and Grace Kay - Jan 25, 2023, 3:46 PM
The college student who tracks Elon Musk's jet says he's worried the tracking software he uses to keep tabs on celebrity aircraft could soon be yanked from the public after it was sold Wednesday.
Aviation data company JetNet said on Wednesday that it bought ADS-B Exchange, a free website that tracked thousands of commercial aircraft around the world.
Now it's unclear whether the flight information on the ADS-B exchange will remain free to the public. Jack Sweeney, the 20-year-old student behind the @ElonJetNextDay account and other Twitter accounts that track celebrity jets, said selling the company violates the spirit of the air enthusiast community that's powered the site. He's even calling for a boycott.
https://www.businessinsider.com/student-tracks-elon-musk-jet-calls-for-boycott-adsb-exhange-2023-1
The Flight Tracker That Powered @ElonJet Just Took a Left Turn
ADS-B Exchange, beloved for resisting censorship, was sold to a company owned by private equity—and now even its biggest fans are bailing.
Justin Ling - Jan 27, 2023 7:00 AM
A major independent flight tracking platform, which has made enemies of the Saudi royal family and Elon Musk, has been sold to a subsidiary of a private equity firm. And its users are furious.
ADS-B Exchange has made headlines in recent months for, as AFP put it, irking “billionaires and baddies.” But in a Wednesday morning press release, aviation intelligence firm Jetnet announced it had acquired the scrappy open source operation for an undisclosed sum.
Jetnet mostly provides intelligence for the aviation industry and was itself acquired by private equity firm Silversmith Capital Partners last year. According to a company press release, “the acquisition is the second of what the company anticipates will be several future acquisitions as Jetnet expands its data-driven product offerings for the aviation industry.”
The flight tracker that powered @ElonJet has taken a left turn
ADS-B Exchange is now owned by private equity—and now even its biggest fans are bailing.
Justin Ling, wired.com - 1/29/2023, 3:21 AM
A major independent flight tracking platform, which has made enemies of the Saudi royal family and Elon Musk, has been sold to a subsidiary of a private equity firm. And its users are furious.
ADS-B Exchange has made headlines in recent months for, as AFP put it, irking “billionaires and baddies.” But in a Wednesday morning press release, aviation intelligence firm Jetnet announced it had acquired the scrappy open source operation for an undisclosed sum.
Jetnet mostly provides intelligence for the aviation industry and was itself acquired by private equity firm Silversmith Capital Partners last year. According to a company press release, “the acquisition is the second of what the company anticipates will be several future acquisitions as Jetnet expands its data-driven product offerings for the aviation industry.”
The deal wasn’t exactly welcomed by the user base that makes up ADBS-B Exchange. “I don’t see a long future for ADSBx under a PE [private equity] firm,” one user wrote on ADS-B Exchange’s Discord server. “And definitely not the information-for-all we-show-all-the-data service it is today. The paycheck was bigger than the vision.”
FlightAware
FlightAware
As the leader in providing advanced, accurate, actionable data and insights that inform every aviation decision, FlightAware is Central to Aviation ®
FlightLabs
FlightLabs
Find Flight Data And Airport Information For Any Location.
Free, powerful REST API for real-time flight status and tracking information. Live data for flights, airports, schedules, timetables, IATA codes, and more.
FlightRadar24
China Bans Flightradar24
msmash - Monday November 08, 2021 10:45AM
China has decided to ban access to Flightradar24, a real-time commercial aircraft flight-tracking service that provides equipment to volunteers to collect aviation data. A Chinese national security agency in 2020 discovered that a citizen with the surname Li had signed up to receive the equipment from Flightradar24 and track aircraft.
https://slashdot.org/story/21/11/08/1815206/china-bans-flightradar24
Live Near An Airport? FlightRadar24 Wants To Give You A Free ADS-B Receiver
Live near an airport and want to do your bit? FlightRadar24 hopes to perfect tracking in such catchments.
Henry Wood - 23 July 2023
The world's most trusted plane tracker, FlightRadar24, is keen to distribute specialized Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast receivers, so tracking services may improve in areas of equally high congestion and interest.
Between 30 and 50 kits are sent to volunteer hosts each month and their interactive, DIY nature makes for a relished contribution to the world of modern aviation. The kits contain a receiver, antenna and all the necessary cabling for any hosts who apply and qualify. Hosts also receive a free FlightRadar24 Business Plan subscription worth US $499.99.
FlightStats
Flightstats
FlightStats Serves the Needs of On-the-go Travelers
Flight School
Florida Police Arrest Woman for Allegedly Tampering With Flight School Computers
Melbourne Airport Police wrote in court documents the changes appear to have been made to clear potentially unsafe planes to fly.
Tom McKay - 13 October 2021 2:02PM
A Florida woman is under arrest after allegedly tampering with airplane records belonging to a flight training school, whose CEO warned that the incident could have resulted in planes with prior maintenance issues taking to the skies.
Local TV station News Channel 9 first reported that 26-year-old Lauren Lide of Brevard County is the main suspect in the breach. Authorities charged her with one count of fraudulent use of a computer and two counts of unauthorized access to a computer system or network.
Lide quit her job as a flight operations manager at Melbourne Flight Training (MFT) in November 2019, the same day the company terminated the employment of her father Hampton Lide, the school’s director of maintenance. Investigators determined that someone using the login of the current flight operations manager made potentially dangerous modifications to flight software, with MFT CEO Derek Fallon writing in an affidavit obtained by the channel that make, model, and tail numbers for 12 aircraft were missing, aircraft reminders were deleted, and some craft flagged as having maintenance problems were “cleared” to take off.
https://gizmodo.com/florida-police-arrest-woman-for-allegedly-tampering-wit-1847856168
eVTOL
4 eVTOL trends moving the air taxi industry closer to takeoff
Ben Tigner - 12:50 PM PDT March 17, 2022
It’s likely that if you hadn’t previously heard of eVTOLs (electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft), they might have made their way onto your radar last year.
Between the billions of dollars in capital, SPACs and test flights, there were countless companies touting their newest developments and technological milestones bringing us one step closer to the commercialization of air taxis.
The billions of dollars raised by eVTOL companies last year mean one thing for 2022 — massive growth. I’ve been working in the aircraft development space for decades, but 2021 was different.
I’m keeping my eye on four trends for the next two years that will drastically change the way these companies operate and influence how interested entrepreneurs and investors can participate in the development of the burgeoning eVTOL ecosystem.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/17/4-evtol-trends-moving-the-air-taxi-industry-closer-to-takeoff/
General Aviation
The $20 an hour Cessna 172 experiment
November 25, 2020 - Jay O'Donnell
When I learned to fly in the 1980s, the school’s fleet was comprised of already decade-old Cessna 172s, most of which clearly showed their age and the toll of countless training maneuvers, hard landings, and checkrides. The seats and interiors were already well-worn and faded, seat belts stained and produced odors of the many previous occupants, plastic dashboards cracked and re-glued multiple times, the original 1960s NAV/COM radios scratchy with often only one properly functioning, not to mention the multiple cowling screw heads stripped from a decade of inspections, oil changes, and engine overhauls.
Back then I paid $45 per hour, wet, for a 172. The CFI cost me another $15-$20/hour depending if VFR or IFR training, and there was no requirement to have your own renter’s insurance (the FBO did offer a $3/hr option that would limit max deductible to $500, but few took then up on the offer). My PPL cost me about $3,500 total, including checkride and even a shiny new Peltor folding headset. There were plenty of planes to rent at numerous small airports due to “trickle-down economics” tax laws that made lease-backs make financial sense. Cessna was producing the same 172s at a rate of over 2,000 a year to pacify demand of FBOs, flight schools, flying clubs, as well as personal buyers—who viewed the price tag of about $17,000 as feasible.
https://airfactsjournal.com/2020/11/the-20-an-hour-cessna-172-experiment/
History
Remembering what flying was like fifty years ago
Fifty years ago, I soloed a Cessna 172. The FAA Wright Brothers Awards notwithstanding, it wasn’t really fifty years ago – yes, 2023 – 1973 = 50 – but it was only 49 years ago, and I flew on the 49th anniversary of first solo. But let’s call it fifty.
One October back in ’73, my instructor and I flew from Hanscom Field, outside Boston, to Lawrence, Massachusetts. Actually, I thought I was ready the lesson before, and I flew better on that lesson, but he didn’t solo me then.
There was no pre-solo endorsement in my logbook, nor for the instrument and commercial flight tests the next year. None were required. In fact, none of my logbooks have any endorsements for any flight test.
https://airfactsjournal.com/2024/03/remembering-what-flying-was-like-fifty-years-ago/
March 4, 2024 - Ed Wischmeyer
Restricted Air Space
White House
Flying High
Leonard and Sondra Nones - Jan 12, 2018
When I owned Piper N47943, a four seat single engine airplane, I thought it prudent not to fly myself to assignments. I did not want the stress of being the pilot and the photographer. But, when I got an assignment to go to Washington DC to simply take straight on photographs of several monuments, I thought no stress why not fly, take the pictures and fly home. It was a perfect summer day. CAVU all the way. (Cieling and Visability Unlimited). I filed a visual flight plan and we were on our way. I was very naive in my selection of airports in the DC area. My choise was Washington National, right in the middle of town, and a very busy place.
The trip down was beautiful and I made a smooth landing on the 6000 foot runway. As I was taxing to my parking place, I received a radio call from ground control. The caller advised me to make a reservation for my departure. He gave me a phone number and instructed me to call one hour before we would be ready to take off. The art director and I rented a car and we drove around Washington. I took the photographs and we went to lunch.