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Image of the crashed helicopter courtesy of ATSB On 5 October 2025, a Schweizer 269C-1 helicopter departed Lake Macquarie Airport for what should have been a simple ferry flight to Duri, New South Wales. The pilot had just collected the aircraft after its annual service. This was to be a routine flight, one they’d done many times before. Before take-off, the pilot looked at the fuel gauge: 92 litres. The number matched expectations, and the aircraft had just come from mainten

On the night of June 1, 2009, Air France Flight 447, an Airbus A330 flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, vanished over the Atlantic Ocean. The aircraft crashed after entering an aerodynamic stall from which it never recovered, killing all 228 people on board. What intrigued investigators wasn’t just that a modern, sophisticated airliner could fall out of the sky, it was how it fell out of the sky. There was no explosion, no catastrophic mechanical failure, no storm that shoul

The Wreckage of Asiana Flight 214. Image courtesy of the NTSB On July 6, 2013, Asiana Airlines Flight 214, a Boeing 777 from Seoul, approached San Francisco International Airport under clear skies. As the aircraft neared the runway, it was far too low and too slow. The tail struck the seawall, the fuselage broke apart, and three passengers died. Miraculously, 304 others survived. At first glance, it looked like yet another a classic case of “pilot error”, a failure to monitor

Depiction of the Tenerife Airport Disaster On March 27, 1977, two Boeing 747 Jumbo Jets, one operated by KLM, the other by Pan Am, collided on a fog-covered runway at Los Rodeos Airport in Tenerife. Five hundred and eighty-three people were killed. This is still the deadliest accident in aviation history and it was essentially caused by humans trying to do their jobs in difficult conditions. By communicating, making decisions and managing pressure in a system that allowed mis

Image of the wreckage taken from the NTSB report In March 2023, a Beech Baron 58P crashed just after takeoff from Lubbock Executive...

Wreckage of Flight 81. By National Transportation Safety Board On July 31, 2008, East Coast Jets Flight 81, a Hawker Beechcraft 125-800A,...

Optus CEO Stephen Rue fronted the media to apologise for the devastating outage. Photo: Optus press conference In September 2025, Optus...

2 North American T6s the instant before collision Accident investigation reports are meant to do more than describe what happened. Their...

Empowering a team is like handing them the keys to a high-performance vehicle. You don’t just want them to drive; you want them to race,...

Image from the final accident report of the F-15D in the irrigation ditch In May 2023, an F-15D from the Oregon Air National Guard...

F/A-18 Classic Hornet at Sunrise over the Arabian Gulf "No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy."  This famous line from...

RAF Harrier G77A on board a RN aircraft carrier just about to launch “No plan survives first contact with the enemy.” This old military...

Image credit: OceanGate Introduction The story of the Titan submersible accident should be familiar to most people and this blog isn't...

F/A-18s conducting AAR with a USAF KC-135 Across my flying career, the leaders I’ve respected most were the ones who, after a tough...

“We’ll debrief every mission, no exceptions.” In fighter squadrons, feedback isn’t optional—it’s survival. After every sortie, the crews...

Armed Royal Air Force Typhoons - Achieve and maintain Air Superiority for the bombers to get in and destroy their targets. This mission...

F/A-18 Hornets over the desert Military flying squadrons cannot function effectively if one person takes charge all the time. While the...

Just Culture: Balancing Accountability and Learning “No one raised any concerns, so I assumed everyone was aligned.” “I told you that...