May 2010 Archives

An American Airlines McDonnell Douglas DC-10 crashed at O'Hare International Airport, Chicago during take-off, killing all 259 passengers, 13 crew and two people on the ground. The aircraft type was grounded across the US.

Other articles in the archive on the safety of the DC-10:

DC-10: Europeans decide....  (whether to take the unprecedented step of restoring individual national certificates of airworthiness without waiting for action by the US Federal Aviation Administration)

DC-10 major accidents

English woman Amy Johnson landed in Darwin, Northern Territory, becoming the first woman to successfully fly from England to Australia.

Flight reported the success in its pages on 30 May issue. We wrote: "Her pluck and her unexpected skill have captured the public imagination to an unprecedented degree. In herself she is a modest but very earnest young woman of 22."

You can read excerpts of her daily log in Flight's archive pages charting her route and progress.

Flight reported that on 5 May "Amy Johnson, of Hull, left Croydon for Australia, piloting a D.H. Gipsy-Moth.

"Miss Johnson, who is the only woman to hold an Air Ministry ground engineer's licence, hopes to beat Bert Hinkler's record of 15 and a half days for the journey."

We noted that the aircraft, previously flown by Capt. Hope, was fitted with a larger fuel tank and she had experienced rain storms over the Balkan mountains.

More information in the Flight archives about Amy Johnson during 1930 including an article with a caption that reads: "Miss Amy Johnson, with her father and mother, standing beside the M.G. sports car presented to her by Sir William Morris. Empire, said Miss Johnson was the first woman to be an honorary member of the guild." 

 

A quick blog post to dispel some ash cloud-related rumors which are spreading like wild fire at the moment.

The following images were taken of a German registered Cessna Citation Jet (D-IEFA), which suffered an uncontained event in the left engine during a flight from Stuttgart to Bremen.

The aircraft returned to Stuttgart and landed without incident.



They're doing the rounds via email at the moment purporting to be the result of the aircraft flying through the ash cloud. That is not the case.

This NTSB report features the date of the incident - 1 March 2010 - and clearly puts this at least four weeks before any ash cloud disruption occurred.

The Royal Air Force considers the Battle of Britain fought over Britain between the 10th July and 31st October 1940, as the most important event in its history.

The Battle of Britain was so called after prime minister, at the time Winston Churchill said in the House of Commons: "The Battle of France is over. I expect the Battle of Britain is about to begin..."

The Royal Air Force Museum, built on the site of the old Hendon Aerodrome in London's suburb of Hendon, announced plans to build a beacon that would be a huge, landscape-dominating structure housing a permanent exhibition of aircraft, archives and memorabilia on the Battle of Britain and preserved "for the education of future generations".

Peter Dye, the museum's director general, spoke to Flightglobal following the announcement of the intention to erect the Beacon, and said that he was hopeful that residents would not block planning permission and that the structure and exhibition could open in time for the event's 75th anniversary.

See this video interview with him and find out the importance for the Beacon.

 

 

Emirates may be the official sponsor of the World Cup, but that hasn't stopped other airlines--who cannot promote the World Cup--from quietly giving support to and promotion of soccer's (football's) biggest event.

In 2006 Lufthansa painted the nose cone of an A340 to replicate a soccer ball (football) and now British Airways has joined in with its A319 G-EUPX bearing a soccer ball on its nose.

Yannick Delamarre captured these photos of G-EUPX at London Heathrow last week.

On this day at 14:15, Amemian airline Armavia flight 967 missed its arrival in Sochi airport, due to poor weather conditions.

The Airbus A320 crash-landed as it attempted to make a second approach, and hurtled into the Black Sea, along the Russian coast, killing the total of 113 people on board. Air traffic control had said there had been "an improvement in weather condition."

In reality the weather conditions did not meet the compulsory standards of 330ft and 1,500m visibility.

The aircraft had collected a total of 28,200 flying hours and 14,400 cycles.