Friday Fact – Comet
Say the word Comet and a lot of people in aviation will instantly think of the mid-air breakups caused by square windows accelerating metal fatigue. What is far less known is that 2 out of the Comet Mk1’s first 5 accidents were down to the square windows and after the problem was fixed, a further […]
Flying the Furrow – Friday Fact
Regarding last week’s Friday fact, navigating by following railway lines is a tried and tested practice but what happens when you set up a new route across the desert and there are no railways to follow? When a new route was proposed in 1921 between Palestine and Iraq, the decision was taken to emulate a […]
read full story >>Top safety risks in commercial aviation – Friday Fact
In 1925 Sir Sefton Brancker, Director of Civil Aviation, presented a paper to the to the Royal Aeronautical Society in which he analysed the “various sources of danger“. Sir Sefton stated that the top dangers present in aviation were: Breakage of the aircraft itself in the air Jamming or failure of controls Fire Powerplant failure […]
What was the first regulation in powered aviation? – Friday Fact
Although Paris enacted a local ordinance in 1784 about balloon flights the first rule that we could identify as being a direct precursor to our modern regulatory set, came about as a result of the first fatal accident in powered aviation. In 1908, 4 years after their first flight, the Wright brothers were carrying out […]