The tragic flight was a multi-stop service connecting Russia’s far eastern communities. The first flight departed Khabarovsk on time at 08:20 for the flight to Ignatyevo Airport in Blagoveshchensk.  There, the aircraft refuelled and boarded 42 passengers, including five children. Angara flight 2311 was scheduled to depart at 09:10, but weather delays caused the flight to leave two hours late at 11:20 local time with 42 passengers and six crew onboard.

The captain was a graduate of the Talgat Bigeldinov Military Institute who had previously worked for IrAero before joining Angara Airlines. The first officer and the flight engineer joined him on the flight deck with another three crew members in the cabin. All six crew members were residents of Irkutsk Oblast.

The Antonov An-24V, registered in Russia as RA-47315, was manufactured by the Kyiv Aviation Plant in January 1976 and initially flew for Aeroflot. It operated for various carriers before joining Anara’s fleet in 2013.

Aviation Safety Network records show the aircraft has previously been involved in two incidents, including windscreen cracks causing an in-flight depressurisation event in 2017.

The An-24 held a valid airworthiness certificate extended until 2036, reflecting Russia’s policy of extending Soviet-era aircraft service life from 50 years to 60.

The AN-24 continued towards its final destination of Tynda, a remote railway junction town in Amur Oblast near the Chinese border. Tynda Sigita Airport is 16 km north of the town with a single concrete runway of 2,200 metres (7,220 feet) aligned 06/24.

Shortly before 13:00 local time, the aircraft approached Tynda Airport’s runway 06. The weather seems to have been benign, with scattered cloud at 210 metres (700 feet) and broken cloud at 600 metres (2,000 feet), light rain, wind at 7 km/h (under four knots) and visibility at or over 10 km.

It isn’t clear at the moment why the flight crew broke off their approach, choosing instead to go around. There was no distress call. At 12:58 local time, the aircraft lost contact with air traffic control and disappeared from radar screens.

A Rosaviatsiya Mi-8 search helicopter located the burning wreckage at 17:30,  four and a half hours after contact was lost. The crash site’s remote location was not accessible to the helicopters. Over a hundred rescuers used chainsaws and heavy equipment to reach the wreckage, finally arriving at 23:00, ten hours after the crash.

Investigators recovered both flight recorders from the crash site the following day.  The Interstate Aviation Committee, Russia’s aviation authority, reported that the flight data recorder’s magnetic tape media was destroyed in the fire; however, the cockpit voice recorder data had been preserved.

The loss of the FDR data means that we do not have any of the technical data about engines’ power, control surface positions or other flight parameters that might explain the sequence of events leading to an accident.

However, investigators have already stated that the aircraft systems don’t appear to have failed

Prior to the moment of the plane’s collision with the earth’s surface, preliminarily, no failures of the aircraft’s systems were recorded.

This implies that investigators will be focused on crew actions and external factors.

However, Angara Airlines seems to have had some real issues with maintenance.

Russian media reported that a June 2025 inspection of Angara Airlines by Russia’s transport supervisory agency revealed systematic violations: documentation showing aircraft serviced by staff who weren’t working on the relevant days, missing essential testing equipment, and personnel lacking required qualifications. Specific violations included maintenance being performed on two An-24RV aircraft without the special tools required for the inspections.

Rosaviatsia, the federal aviation regulator, has now revoked Angara Airlines’ maintenance certificate, meaning the carrier can no longer perform its own aircraft maintenance and must rely on third-party certified organisations. Eight of Angara’s aircraft were suspended from operation, and four engineering and technical personnel were suspended from maintenance duties.

Angara Airlines continues to offer flights under heightened scrutiny and regulatory oversight.

The government’s response to the tragedy has been swift. Russian media reports that families will receive 5.025 million rubles (63K USD, 47K GBP, 54K EUR) per victim from three sources: 2.025 million rubles from insurance companies, 2 million rubles from Angara Airlines and 1 million rubles from regional government assistance. Regional payments of 1 million rubles started arriving to families last week.

Angara Airlines is covering all transportation costs for victims’ bodies to burial sites, while five major Russian carriers – Aeroflot, Aurora, NordWind, NordStar, and S7 – offered free flights for families travelling to memorial services. Regional officials were assigned to each family to handle paperwork and funeral arrangements. In addition, negotiations are being held with credit institutions on the possible write-off of debts belonging to the dead citizens.

A spontaneous memorial appeared in Tynda.

The banner reads “Tynda 24.07.2025 we mourn” and shows an aircraft on approach. The photographs show residents bringing flowers, sweets and toys in remembrance. Five children were killed in the crash.

The loss of the An-24 highlights Russia’s deteriorating aviation infrastructure under Western sanctions. These sanctions have eliminated access to Boeing and Airbus parts and services, forcing airlines to operate ageing Soviet aircraft well beyond their intended service life. Domestic aircraft assembly costs have surged 45-70% between 2022 and 2024, while Russia imports over $1 billion in Western aviation components through third countries to maintain operations. Russian airlines retired 58 passenger aircraft in 2024 as the result of accidents and the inability to continue to perform maintenance.

In 2011, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called for the accelerated decommissioning of An-24s, which were banned from scheduled flights within Russia. However, the ban was cancelled to mitigate the lack of viable aircraft. Ninety-three An-24 aircraft are in service worldwide, with about 50 of them operating in Russia. The TVRS-44 Ladoga, a twin-engine aircraft meant to succeed the An-24, is behind schedule and mass production is not expected until 2027 at the earliest.

In 2022, the FAA in the US downgraded Russia to “Category 2” status for non-compliance with ICAO standards.  The EU has blacklisted 22 Russian airlines for serious safety deficiencies.

The formal investigation continues under the Interstate Aviation Committee, with criminal proceedings initiated under Article 263 of the Russian Criminal Code covering transportation safety violations resulting in multiple deaths. Investigators conducted searches at Angara Airlines’ offices, seizing flight operations and technical documentation.

Nothing about Flight 2311 lines up neatly yet: the weather was not rough, the crew never called anything wrong and all the aircraft systems seem to have been intact before the impact. The only thing we know right now is that the An-24 was flying under a system under strain, with ageing airframes, questionable maintenance and no room for error.

Neil of AirC Images mailed me with this amazing photograph and video of his father. This is Neil’s dad Cornell as a young boy with his siblings (Betty, Virginia and Tom).

Cornell was drafted into the US Army Air Corps (Ferry Squadron) in 1941 and flew Bomber Transports as as a Flight Engineer until 1945.

In 2015, when Cornell turned 95, Neil arranged for a birthday flight for Cornell and made this fantastic three-minute video of the occasion.

When I wrote about the B-52 a few weeks ago, Andy mailed me a fantastic photograph of him in a B-52 stationed at Upper Heyford in 1981.

It truly is a HUGE aircraft. The fuselage is so big that it is actually rippled/undulating.

The guy showing me around said that if the tail gunner couldn’t be bothered to use the correct crawl space to get to the cockpit to grab some food (there was a grill between the pilot/co-pilot seats), well then, the pilot would radio back and confirm that the bomb doors were closed and locked so he could just RUN across the bomb bay.

I remember after Thatcher getting in, in 1979…the sheer amount of US military aircraft that were being dumped into the UK. As an 11-year-old, it was quite an awesome sight to watch these things going overhead. Even a Starfighter made an appearance! Lord knows why or just how exactly it got there, not noted for their range!)

Finally, on my personal newsletter, Accidents and Incidents, I wrote about my odd experience taking part in a documentary about the Bermuda Triangle. They invited me to talk about Flight 19 but somehow I ended up in the left seat of an Airbus A320 simulator!

They Let Me Fly the Plane tells the whole story.

It’s happened so fast, I don’t know what to say, so I comply, pushing the thrust levers forward and veering back and forth on the runway while the director fires questions at me. We lift off but I have no idea how much pressure to use on the side-stick; I am pitching the airliner up and down like a dolphin as I try to answer his questions. The camera man looks slightly green but valiantly keeps filming, asking me to look towards him because my hair is covering my face. The supervisor points out that I still need to retract the gears; we are flying with our wheels down and flaps still set for take off.

“Look at me,” says the director. “Talk about how easy it is to fly.”

(Warning: contains strong language)

I didn’t write about the documentary here at the time (I wanted to see how the documentary turned out! It wasn’t bad actually) but I did write Airbus A320 vs Grumman Avenger.

I’ve been travelling so much, I haven’t had the time to write something new. What I did write, for reasons that are difficult to explain, was a comparison of the Grumman TBF Avenger and the Airbus A320.

As usual, the best bit is in the comments.

There’s been a lot of interesting crashes to discuss and especially, a lot of media interest, which gives the perception that air travel has been unusually dangerous in 2025. As of right now, the US fatal accident count is trending only slightly higher than 2024. Globally, there does not (so far!) to be a spike in the number of serious accidents. We’ll get back at looking at these next week.

New! You can also listen to an automatically generated audio file of the article!

It should have been a simple ferry flight, under 150 kilometres. The owner and operator, Saurya Airlines, is a Nepalese domestic carrier founded in 2014 with a single Bombardier CRJ 200. In 2017, they purchased a second CRJ 200, registered in Nepal as 9N-AME, as a back-up aircraft. As of July 2024, this was their only operational aircraft.

Except that it wasn’t operational. That CRJ 200LR had been grounded for 34 days .

The day before the accident, the Air Transport Division of the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal approved the ferry flight for the aircraft to fly from Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu to Pokhara International Airport, where the CRJ 200LR was to undergo base maintenance (C-check). The aircraft had already undergone preservation of aircraft and return to service maintenance checks.

That morning, the first officer was first to arrive in the cockpit, while Saurya Airlines personnel loaded the cargo. The ground staff said the cargo section was completely full, so they had to load the remaining baggage and equipment into the cabin.

Saurya Airlines was the first officer’s first employer; he had been with the airline since he’d finished his commercial training in 2021. When converting the CRJ 200, he’d failed his initial simulator check, which led to him extending his training in Germany by three months. This significantly increased his training costs, which was added to his bond with Saurya Airlines, meaning he had to remain with the airline or else pay back the remaining balance. On top of this, he had had to take out a loan to fund his living costs in Germany for the additional training.

He’d then been laid off by the airline for an unspecified time but later reinstated “based on flight hours”. His duty and flight hours were significantly reduced, as the company’s operations were low. His simulator performance was marked as Satisfactory.

While the first officer went through the pre-start checks, the flight dispatcher called with the aircraft weight and balance: 18,137 kilogrammes.

The first officer would use the aircraft weight, along with the environmental conditions and the runway parameters, to determine the V-speeds for the flight and enter them into the flight management system.

The key take-off speeds are V₁, which is the speed at which a take-off should no longer be aborted, V_R, the speed at which to rotate the aircraft, lifting the nose for take off, and V₂, the speed at which the aircraft can still safely climb with one engine out. These speeds are calculated before every flight, marked on the airspeed with coloured bugs, and repeated as part of the pre-flight briefing.

Now that the first officer had the take-off weight of the aircraft, he could use the speedcard booklet to calculate the V-speeds for the flight.

He flipped to the card for 18,500 kg take-off weight and used the base V-speeds for flaps at 20° (V₁: 109, V_R: 115) V₂: 125) to calculate the correct speeds for the CRJ 200 based on their altitude of 4,400 feet above sea level.

• V₁ (take-off decision speed): 114 knots
• V_R (rotation speed): 118 knots
• V₂ (take-off safety speed): 126 knots

The captain arrived at the cockpit. He had joined Saurya as a first officer in 2015 and was promoted to captain in 2017. Now he served both as a captain and as Saurya’s Operations Director. His simulator performance was marked as Excellent.

There were 30 minutes until the intended take-off. The captain asked about the checks that the first officer had done so far and provided supervisory instructions. A third crew member, an Aircraft Maintenance Technician, joined the flight crew and they discussed the C-Check planned in Pokhara and “other casual topics unrelated to the flight” with some of the staff in the cabin.

At that point, the flight crew were contacted to say that they needed to delay their departure, as more personnel were expected. The captain responded a minute later that they were going to have to cancel engine start-up. Air Traffic Control noticed the same thing, calling the crew to ask whether they needed their taxi to be delayed. The crew responded that they needed more time, up to 30 more minutes.

The remaining Saurya personnel arrived at that point and the cabin door was closed. The crew initiated start up of both engines and they began to taxi, doing the control surface checks along the way. The flaps were extended to 20°. They entered runway 02 and performed a backtrack to the threshold in order to use the full length of the runway.

At exactly 11:10 local time, the crew called from runway 02 that they were ready for departure.

At 11:10:25 they applied power for take off with both engines N1 power achieving 92% within 13 seconds. They skipped the rest of the pre-take-off checklist and began accelerating down the runway.

The first officer called out V₁. A second later, the captain abruptly pulled back on the yoke. This abrupt elevator input, going from 1.5° to 10° elevator deflection over one second, caused a rapid pitch up that peaked at a staggering 8.6° per second, as opposed to the expected 3° per second pitch up.

The aircraft lifted sharply into the air, travelling just under 120 knots computed airspeed, just above the computed V_R (rotation speed). The first officer can be heard on the Cockpit Voice Recorder saying “Woah….woah…woah”.

The aircraft was travelling at 131 knots as they climbed to 11 feet above the runway. The stick shaker activated, warning of an impending stall.

From the outside, bystanders saw the CRJ 200 rolling to the right, then banking sharply and rolling to the left, only to roll back hard to the right. The aircraft was nearly inverted as they continued rolling right, climbing through 77 feet.

The timing on this isn’t exact but the first officer was still speaking, calling out “Sir, sir, sir!”

The right wing smashed into the runway, just before the intersection of taxiway Juliet. The CRJ 200 cartwheeled onto the east side of the runway and continued east, striking a cargo container and shed belonging to Air Dynasty Heli Services before bursting into flames.

The aircraft had taken off at 11:10:55. During the oscillations, the aircraft reached a peak of just over 100 feet above the runway. The FDR stopped recording thirteen seconds after take off, at 11:11:08.

Four fire vehicles were dispatched the moment the right wing struck the ground. The aircraft had fallen into a gorge, sliding down 130 feet over the next four seconds. The fire vehicles struggled to reach the crash site. The first fire vehicle found a position and began spraying water while the next two vehicles paused, not immediately taking part in the fire-fighting efforts. Rescue personnel helped the captain who escaped from the cockpit embedded in the cargo container but no effort was made to rescue the remaining crew from the cockpit before it burst into flames.

The front of the passenger cabin was immediately fully engulfed in fierce flames, with no possibility of rescuing anyone from the front.

In addition to the flight crew, there were sixteen people seated in the passenger cabin, including a four-year-old child. Of the nineteen on board, fifteen were killed in the impact. Three were pulled from the wreckage of the cabin; however they died en route to the hospital. The captain, who suffered serious injuries, was the only survivor.

Four months before the accident, the aircraft underwent an inspection for the renewal of the Certificate of Airworthiness. The report doesn’t specify the results of this inspection other than that the MLG TBO (Main Landing Gear Time Between Overhaul) was set to expire in April. The airline received an extension to do this maintenance, giving them until June to complete the work needed. In April, Saurya also received a special permit for a test flight to renew the now-expired Certificate of Airworthiness.

But they didn’t get the maintenance done in time. On the 19th of June, a month before the accident flight, the extension for the landing gear maintenance expired. The aircraft registered as 9N-AME was grounded.

The operator was clearly struggling to get the CRJ 200 back into service. The fact that they needed extensions and special permits to deal with the ongoing certification issues suggests that the airline was struggling to maintain their fleet properly, even though the fleet consisted of only one aircraft at this point.

Saurya repeatedly arranged for short-term storage for the aircraft until the 22nd of July, two days before the accident, when both main landing gear assemblies were finally removed and reinstalled as per the necessary overhaul.

The following day, the Air Transport Division of the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal approved a one-time non-revenue ferry flight for 9N-AME to fly to Pokhara International Airport, where it would undergo base maintenance (C-check).

The question remains: why were there 19 souls, including a young child, on board an aircraft flying for maintenance on a special ferry flight permit?

That morning, the day of the accident, the aircraft underwent a return to service check.

It’s important to note that the investigation found no mechanical defects that contributed to the accident. The maintenance work was completed properly, and flight data showed all aircraft systems functioned normally during the take-off sequence.

The loading of the aircraft, on the other hand, was cause for serious concern. The load sheet estimated 600 kg of baggage but they only found 402.5 kg at the crash site. Then they found an additional 98.6 kg had been removed from the crash site without being processed. This baggage was recovered from Saurya corporate offices in what the investigators later called out as evidence tampering.

Notably, this still leaves the aircraft 100 kilograms short of the stated load for the flight.

The ground crew said that the hold was full and additional cargo had to be loaded into the aircraft cabin. This was done in a haphazard manner, with lubricants, contact cleaners, wheel chocks, toolboxes and food items simply dumped onto seats and in the aisles without being secured. Among the wreckage, investigators found hydraulic fluid spilt on the floor of the cabin and evidence of dangerous goods, including flammable contact cleaner (classified as UN1950 hazardous material), loaded without proper documentation or securing. Saurya Airlines did not have a permit for transporting dangerous goods.

The captain and the flight dispatcher were aware that this baggage had been loaded into the passenger cabin but did not see it as a point of concern.

Apparently, this was business as usual.

The crash was made worse by the fact that Tribhuvan International Airport’s runway safety areas didn’t meet international standards established by ICAO Annex 14. The investigation found that the low-lying areas on the east side of the runway, where 9N-AME crashed, failed to comply with requirements for runway strips.

Runway strips serve as safety zones for aircraft that overshoot, overrun, or veer off runways during takeoff or landing accidents. They must be free of obstacles and maintained to allow rapid access for rescue and firefighting vehicles. At Tribhuvan, the non-compliant areas surrounding the runway had been flagged for over a decade without meaningful correction. If the runway strip had met ICAO standards, the crash would have taken place within the safety area. Instead, the wreckage was in rough and uneven terrain, creating confusion for rescue crews and delaying their response.

The crash area had never been included in emergency exercises, so the firefighting and rescue crews had no plan for accessing that terrain. Only the lead unit engaged in active firefighting. The other three vehicles arrived but stopped short of the wreckage, uncertain about access and unclear on their orders. They had access to foam tenders and dry chemical agents but used only basic water spraying.

To make matters worse, the emergency gate nearest to the crash site was closed, blocked by construction materials and other debris.

The result was a disjointed and incompetent emergency response when every second was critical. The investigation concluded that with proper rescue coordination and compliant runway safety areas, the first officer and maintenance technician in the detached cockpit may have survived, instead of being swallowed by flames while rescuers made no co-ordinated effort to rescue them.

There was no cabin crew on board, despite the presence of 16 passengers, including a child. No safety briefing was made, nor was anyone on board to ensure that basic safety measures were complied
with. Most of the occupants of the passenger cabin were killed by blunt force injuries. The rescue and fire fighting teams did not document whether the passengers were wearing seatbelts, which leaves
us with little to go on as to the injury patterns.

All this, on what was meant to be a special approval ferry flight. Nepal has multiple regulations regarding ferry flights, referencing the EU guidance that ferry flights are for non-airworthy civil aircraft. However, the CAAN documents are not completely clear, defining ferry flights as Special VFR flights with no passengers carried in one document and that persons on board shall be limited to “flight crew and maintenance people” in another document, FOR(A) Nepal Para 8.7.4.

The Saurya staff were not essential to the flight, but strictly speaking, the majority of them were maintenance people, which could arguably be justified based on paragraph 8.7.4. Even if we accept that, however, it does not explain why family members were on board, including a small child, the improperly loaded cargo or why the flight was operated without cabin crew.

We cannot get the answers to these questions. Those killed in the crash included Saurya’s Manager of Continuing Airworthiness Management Organisation, which is deeply ironic under the circumstances, but also means that the investigation could not determine the justification for loading the aircraft with non-essential personnel. Also killed were the Maintenance Manager, the Airline Safety Manager and QA manager.

It is difficult to imagine that they did not think to comment on the hazardous flammable goods simply tossed into the cabin.

Because there were no formal check-in procedures for those boarding the plane, the cargo and personal items were not weighed. The ground crew (bizarrely, mentioned as the marketing department in the report) were given a crude estimation of the baggage weight, which they wrote down for the loading manifest. The cockpit voice recorder includes a conversation between ground and maintenance personnel discussing the rough weight estimation, which the flight dispatcher then listed as 18,137 kg on the load and trim sheet.

The investigators attempted to reverse-engineer the actual aircraft weight using physics and flight data. Remarkably, the actual weight was not far off, around 18,300, plus or minus 200 kilos.

Based on this, the V-speeds should have been calculated at V₁=118, V_R=123, V₂=127.5 knots.

But we know that the crew actually rotated at under 120 knots, closer to V₁ than V_R. Sure, the aircraft was heavier than estimated; however that should only have led to a discrepancy of one knot for V₁ and V_R and only half a knot for V₂.

The problem, it turns out, was the speedcard.

Remember those base speeds for 18,500 kg take-off weight?

• V₁: 109
• V_R: 115
• V₂: 125

Unfortunately, those numbers were wrong. In fact, the V-speed references on that page were a direct copy of the correct V-speeds for a take-off weight of 17,500 kg.

The ground crew had estimated the weight of the aircraft to within a few hundred kilos. But the speedcard in the aircraft was 1,000 kilos out.

From the report:

The fact that none of the flight crew noticed the blunder in the speedcard though-out the history of the airline is a critical failure of the flight operations and safety management.

The speedcard had been wrong for ten years. No one at Saurya Airlines had ever noticed.

The captain, the only survivor of the flight, recalled that he had not confirmed the V-speeds calculated by the first officer, which he should have done as standard. But he was also not aware of the error in the speedcard and so would not have questioned the V-speeds, which the first officer had calculated correctly based on the speedcard data.

Now we see the true issue: a rotation speed of 118 knots instead of the required 123 knots.

The stall speed of the CRJ 200 was 111 knots. The captain, as Pilot Flying, rotated at just under 120 knots, only 9 knots above the stall speed. He quickly deflected the elevator from 1.5° to 10° over just one second, three times faster than standard rotation, pitching up abruptly as if trying to unstick the aircraft by brute force.

Both wings reached a dangerously high angle of attack, causing the stick-shaker to activate to warn the pilots that the aircraft was at risk of stalling. Based on historical data, the aircraft’s right wing was prone to stalling first, true for both of the airline’s CRJ 200s, actually, and that’s what happened here.

The CRJ 200 suffered an asymmetric stall as the right wing lost lift. The aircraft began to roll to the right with a bank angle of 26°. The captain reacted as the stick shaker activated, rolling left and holding it for two seconds. The aircraft rolled left 55° at 50 feet above the ground. The aircraft lurched up to 100 feet before pitching back down. They rolled hard to the right to 94.6° (nearly inverted). There was no chance of recovery.

The first officer tried to intervene but was unable to communicate effectively, repeating “woah” and “sir” instead of something useful like “reduce pitch!”

The wrong V-speeds set up the dangerous conditions. However, it was that initial excessive pitch up by the captain that started them on the path to loss of control. A normal rotation should be maximum 3° per second. There is a warning in the CRJ 200 manual that the type is susceptible to control issues on take-off with excessive pitch rates/overrotation. The Saurya Airlines take-off procedures, however, did not mention the importance of a 3° per second rotation rate.

In fact, high rotation rates of over 4° per second were common at Saurya. The aircraft’s flight data recorder showed 18 instances of excessively high pitch rates above 5°/second over the previous year. The most extreme cases were a take off at 5.8°/second in January 2024 and 5.5°/second in March 2024. That March 2024 flight was the captain, the same who would become the sole survivor of the accident flight.

The accident flight’s 6.5°/second was the highest ever recorded. However, this wasn’t just a simple pilot error on a single flight; it was the airline culture. No one at Saurya Airlines was monitoring or correcting this dangerous technique.

About those rotations… We’re lucky to have that historical data because the investigation also found that the Flight Data Recorder had been malfunctioning since at least 2021 without anyone noticing.
It was the responsibility of CAAN (Nepal’s civil aviation authority) to verify the FDRs to confirm that all mandatory parameters are being recorded. Annually. They did not notice anything wrong for at least four years.

Key missing parameters included Control column forces (how hard pilots pushed/pulled), Control wheel forces (roll inputs), Rudder pedal forces and positions and brake pedal applications. Without the control force data, investigators can’t recreate how aggressively the captain pulled on the controls or whether the first officer tried to physically intervene.

The lack of oversight by the regulator was not a one-off issue. A safety audit in September 2023 found that CAAN had inadequate training for its inspectors. The audit identified systemic weaknesses in the CAAN safety programmes and the frameworks for monitoring safety systems. Additionally, CAAN was struggling with resource shortages and personnel management issues, which directly affected its ability to oversee airline operations.

I know this has been a very long article but, truly, this accident is hard to believe, let alone explain. Every level of the aviation safety system failed simultaneously: crew procedures, airline operations, aircraft performance data, regulatory oversight, airport emergency response, and even post-accident evidence handling.

The final report lays the blame firmly at Saurya’s failures.

Most Probable Cause
The most probable cause of the accident was a deep stall during take-off because of an abnormally rapid pitch rate commanded at a lower than optimal rotation speed.

Contributing Factors

The contributory factors to the accident are:

1. Incorrect speeds calculated based on erroneous speedcard. The interpolated speedcard of the operator for 18,500 kg TOW mentions incorrect V-speeds for take-off. This error in the speedcard went unnoticed since its development. There was no acceptance/approval of the speedcard booklet.
2. Failure to identify and address multiple previous events of high pitch rate during take-off by the operator.
3. The operator showed gross negligence in complying with the prevailing practices of ferry flight planning, preparation and execution. There is a lack of consistent definition of ferry flights.
4. Gross negligence and non-compliances by the operator during the entire process of cargo and baggage handling (weighing, loading, distribution and latching), while violating the provisions of operational manual and ground handling manual. The load was not adequately secured with straps, tie-downs, or nets, while the flight preparation was rushed.

The report concludes with a collection of immediate actions and longer-term systemic changes. Saurya Airlines has since revised and verified their speed cards and implemented stricter take-off procedures, with targeted retraining for pilots on stall recognition, pitch control and aircraft performance monitoring. They have also introduced a Flight Data Monitoring system to detect unsafe trends. Cargo handling procedures were overhauled.

Emergency response protocols at Tribhuvan International Airport have been updated, and stricter evidence-handling procedures were mandated after post-crash investigation issues.

The Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal says that they have tightened their oversight with increased ramp inspections, regular operational audits, and new rules for aircraft loading and documentation.

I wish Nepal’s aviation industry all the best, but it’s hard to feel confident about their success given the environment that allowed such a breakdown to occur in the first place.

People sometimes ask me what airlines I would avoid flying with. My answer is that it’s not any individual airline that causes me concern so much as the regulator. When the system is broken at the top, the failures filter down.

Nepal’s Civil Aviation Authority will have to do a lot more to earn my trust in the airlines they claim authority over.

The day after, I wrote about the basic details and highlighted two credible theories for what had happened: either the aircraft was badly misconfigured or that both engines failed. At the time, the most compelling reason I could think for both engines failing was contaminated fuel, although it seemed unlikely as that should have affected all aircraft refuelling at the airport that day. I concluded that there could be a further “something else” that we were missing because the details so far didn’t make sense.

That sadly has proven to be the case and it doesn’t look good. I’m going to focus on exactly the sequence of events as stated in the preliminary report.

The aircraft arrived from Delhi flown under different crew. There were no known defects with the aircraft and the weight and balance were within normal operating limits.

The captain held an ATPL with over 15,000 hours experience across a range of aircraft, with 8,600 on type. The first officer held a CPL with 3,400 hours of which 1,128 were on type. Neither had flown over the past 24 hours.  They had arrived at Ahmedabad the previous day in order to operate flight Air India 171 that day. Both had adequate rest periods. Both pilots passed their preflight Breath Analyser test, which is standard procedure for all flight crew at Air India.

The first officer was the Pilot Flying with the captain as Pilot Monitoring.

At 07:43 UTC (12:43 local time) the flight crew contacted ATC for pushback, which was approved, followed by the aircraft starting up. ATC asked if the aircraft required the full length of the runway and the crew confirmed that they did. At 08:07:33, the aircraft was cleared for take-off.

The aircraft accelerated along the runway and reached V1, the take-off decision speed, of 155 knots normally. The aircraft lifted off at 08:08:39 UTC. In the air, the aircraft reached 180 knots indicated airspeed at 08:08:42, at which point the fuel cutoff switches transitioned from the RUN position to the CUTOFF position.

The report uses the word transition, because the flight data only tells us that the position changed. However, a critical piece of information is that there was a one second gap: one switch was set to CUTOFF and then, a second later, the other.

This video posted to Reddit shows the guards around the two fuel cut off switches in a Boeing Dreamliner.  What one can see in the video, which is confirmed in the report, is that to change the switch from the RUN position to CUTOFF position, you have to pull each switch out and then down. There are guards either side. The point is that it is not possible to accidentally knock these switches out of position.

Fuel cut off switch
byu/emoemokade inaviation

So, both switches moved from RUN to CUTOFF, one after the other. Both engines began to lose power as a result of the fuel being cut off, that is, the report is clear that this was a direct cause and effect.

The phrasing of the conversation in the cockpit is important; here’s what the report says:

In the cockpit voice recording, one of the pilots is heard asking the other why did he cutoff. The other pilot responded that he did not do so.

The cockpit voice recording analysis would include which microphone picked up the voices: on the left or on the right. Thus, it is absolutely known which pilot spoke. The investigators made a clear choice not to release the exact wording or to specify which pilot asked the question.

The report confirms that the Ram Air Turbine deployed during the initial climb, as many had observed from the CCTV footage. This confirms that the engines lost power, causing the RAT to deploy.

The aircraft began losing altitude before making it past the airport perimeter wall.

At 08:08:52, the fuel cutoff switch for the #1 engine transitioned from CUTOFF to RUN. The switch for the #2 engine transitioned to RUN a few seconds later. This initiates a “re-light and thrust recovery sequence”, that is, the engines should automatically restart and begin producing thrust again.

In both cases, the engine relighting sequence started; however, this is a slow process. The #1 engine was in the process of spooling up. The #2 engine restarted but was not able to spool up and recover thrust. Effectively, both engines responded exactly as one would expect to having the fuel cut off and restored. The problem was that there wasn’t enough time for both engines to spool back up. Had the issue occurred just a few minutes later, after the aircraft had gained altitude, the engines would have had enough time to restart and produce thrust.

One of the pilots declared an emergency at 08:09:05, calling MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY.

The air traffic controller asked for more information but did not receive a response.

The Flight Data Recorder stopped recording data six seconds after the MAYDAY call, at 08:09:11.

The report documents the wreckage, mostly confirming what we already knew. The Dreamliner crashed into multiple buildings and broke into pieces before catching fire.  The flap handle was found “firmly seated in the 5-degree flap position, consistent with a normal takeoff flap setting.”

Both fuel control switches were in the RUN position. The engine thrust levers were found set to near IDLE but according to the flight data recorder, both remained set to take-off thrust until the crash, so it’s likely that the levers shifted in impact.

Basically, the wreckage analysis so far underscores the fact that the crew attempted to restore fuel flow to both engines before losing control of the rapidly descending aircraft.

Based on initial investigation of the wreckage, there was no fault with the aircraft. The report notes explicitly that there are no recommended actions related to the Boeing 787-8 or the General Electric engines.

The report also referenced Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin NM-18-33, which has been the cause of much speculation. This 2018 bulletin was in response to a number of Boeing aircraft which were delivered from the factory with faulty fuel switches that could be moved too easily. This was not considered to require an airworthiness directive requiring mandatory inspections.

Air India did not inspect the switches of their fleet and were not required to do so. More pertinently, no one had reported any issues with the fuel switches on the accident aircraft after the throttle control module was replaced in 2023.

The important point here is that there are no reported instances where the switches moved themselves. It is possible that this fault had been on the aircraft without comment for two years. If this were the case, it is still clear that a person moved those switches one after the other; however, it would add weight to the idea that cutting off the fuel was not deliberate.

The logistics of the cockpit mean that the Pilot Monitoring was better positioned to move the switches without it being immediately noticed. The Pilot Flying, focused on the take-off, might not immediately notice the movement. The reverse, where the Pilot Flying moved the switches, would be more noticeable. During take off, with both hands on the controls, any such movement would be immediately attract attention, especially as the Pilot Monitoring should be scanning the instruments and not concentrating on any single spot.

The ten seconds between the switches being moved and the question being asked seems relevant. Assuming that the pilot asking the question was not the pilot who moved the switches, then it seems likely to have been a reaction to the engines spooling down followed by a glance towards the switches to see that they were inexplicably set to the CUT OFF position. But these are now logical guesses; we don’t know who spoke, we don’t know what caused them to speak, and we don’t have any way to interpret the response.

The preliminary report makes it clear that the investigating team have additional evidence to review, including the postmortem reports and statements from witnesses and the surviving passenger. Maybe they will find something that can shed more light on what happened in the cockpit.

It could easily be impossible for the investigation to prove who moved the switches, as they are centrally located so that both pilots have access. What we know: someone moved both fuel switches to the cut-off position. We don’t know who did this. We do not know if it was a deliberate action or a fatal mistake. More importantly, it may not be possible to ever know what the intent was.

I’m thinking about B-52s after watching this one land at the airshow at RAF Fairford, demonstrating why the B-52’s landing gear is one of Boeing’s most ingenious solutions.

A really rare and unique opportunity to see this Boeing B-52H Stratofortress, nicknamed the BUFF (Big Ugly Fat Fella), crabbing sideways on the runway after landing at RAF Fairford. This unique feature of B52 was presented on Sunday 16 July 2023 at the Royal International Air Tatto – RIAT.
The iconic bomber was designed with the ability to swivel its landing gear to balance the effects of crosswinds. This capability allows the B-52 with its narrow wheelbase and large tail to land and crab down the runway in a heavy crosswind conditions.
Fun fact – this crab walk did some damage to the airfield infrastructure, nearly 20 runway lights were destroyed, this may happen when you have an aircraft with large wingspan.

The other day, a speeded up version was posted to Reddit with the title of Didn’t know it could do that.. The comments are full of great information!

Misophonic4000 explains what is happening here:

The ability to counter-crab the landing gear (up to 20° in either direction) is the only way the B-52 can land in any kind of crosswind (without a massive wing/pod strike)

Edit: tidbit of info – the system works by the crew inputting the heading of the runway, and then tracking that heading (within those 20°of steering authority in either direction) compared to the compass heading of the plane

…and later in the same thread:

Wait until you realize it’s staggered so it can retract in that narrow body and also leave room for the bomb bay!

Here’s a cool video showing most of the gear retraction sequence https://youtu.be/riEmAvlrynk

critical_patch offers an explanation as to why:

The BUFF has such poor rudder authority that it has to compensate for crosswind in other ways. Like the comment above you says, there would be great risk of a wingtip hitting the ground if it tried to make up for having no rudder with ailerons or body roll, etc. plus not having the landing gear pointing under you anymore. The most practical solution was to make the gear swivel so pilots could land the fucker sideways while using engine thrust to counteract the force of the crosswind.

But Pubics_Cube reassures us that this doesn’t mean the B-52 is hard to land.

The B-52 doesn’t have ailerons, only spoilers; but to answer your question, it’s pretty responsive in the landing configuration. You can scrape a pod pretty easily if you’re not level, but there are outrigger gear on the wingtips that provide a little bit of protection. The wing flex actually works in your favor on landing, because the wing tips are up off the ground as long as they’re producing lift. Once the plane settles in on the runway, they’ll come back down.

The weirdest part about landing with a ton of crab in is looking out the side windows for your aimpoint.

Have you ever noticed that older images of the B-52 never show the landing gear? Macromonster explains why:

The crabbing feature was considered so Top Secret that photographs of the first public rollout either covered up the landing gear or used angles that didn’t show the interesting bits.

Although m00ph points out that Hollywood spilled the beans.

It’s been used as a joke in a few movies where you see a passenger jet take off, and then an underside shot of the very distinctive B-52 gear retracting.

Further along, critical_patch chimes in again with another effect of the small rudder.

Another fun fact, that itsy bitsy rudder is also why the upgrade to B-52J has to keep the 8 engines in the doubled up pods. The plane has to stay steerable through engine failure scenarios—but if the plane had four modern engines (like the configuration on a 747 or A380) the rudder is too small to compensate for a power loss on one of the outboard engines. The differential thrust would be too great for the rudder to stop the plane from yawing to that side!

If you want to know even more about the B-52, HumpyPocock has you covered.

AOPA article below is great, and explains many of the finer points, also included a couple of videos of takeoff and landing in the crab, plus a photo from right underneath showing the landing gear bays are oriented opposite directions fore-to-aft, into which the port and starboard gear retract, as you noted elsewhere.

Article via AOPA incl rather wonderful minutiae (or PDF)

NB here’s an extra photo of the CRAB CONTROL

BUFF Nethers (Port Gear ⟶ Fore / Stbd Gear ⟶ Aft)

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Photos via @HEADDANCER7

Port Three Quarter and Starboard Fore

Head On BUFF and a Tiny BUFF Butt (Wheel)

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Fun Fact ⟶ they’re called Quadricycle Landing Gear

Takeoff in the Crab and Landing in the Crab incl. Rollout

PS oh and a neat size comparison…

Boeing B-52 vs Boeing 747-100SR via Spencer Wilmot

There. That should keep you busy for a while.

I’m going back to bed. If I don’t make it, tell the B-52 community I went out with honour and Sudafed.

The pilot held a commercial helicopter licence issued by the New Zealand Civil Aviation Authority, including type ratings for the Robinson R44 helicopter. He had 157.8 hours flying experience, with 16.8 hours on Robinson R44 helicopters and ten hours night flying in Cabri G2 helicopters. His licence had a limitation for night flights to be conducted within 25 nautical miles of a lit aerodrome.

This is a standard restriction in New Zealand for pilots who have completed basic night training but haven’t yet accumulated enough night flying experience, ensuring that pilots new to night operations remain close to the visual reference of a lit aerodrome until they have gained more experience.

In February 2023, eighteen months before the accident, the pilot registered for an equivalent flight crew licence in Australia. The Australian Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) granted the pilot a Civil Aviation Regulation Part 61 commercial pilot licence for single-engine helicopters. The pilot also held a CASA low-level rating but did not hold a rating for night flights.

The pilot’s logbook did not have any entries for helicopter flights in Australia.

In April 2024, four months before the accident, the pilot got a job working for Nautilus Aviation as a ground crew member at Cairns Airport. His role included general ground duties, including washing and refuelling helicopters, transporting passengers by car, and taking fuel from Cairns Airport to the helipad near the Cairns marina (by road). He was not authorised to fly any of the Nautilus Aviation helicopters.

The CEO of Nautilus Aviation described him after the crash as a model employee who had recently been named employee of the month. There was no evidence of personal or professional distress and no history of reckless behaviour.

He had just received a promotion, transitioning from general ground duties at Cairns to a specialised fuelling role at Horn Island, a small island in the Torres Strait in Queensland, about 800 kilometres north of Cairns. He was due to travel to Horn Island on Monday morning, the 12th of August.

On Sunday evening, the 11th, the pilot’s friends organised a farewell party, as he was moving bases to Horn Island. The pilot went out drinking with those friends and colleagues.  Later, Nautilus Aviation told the press that the other employees of the company went home at 20:30. “It wasn’t a booze up, it wasn’t a huge night.”

However, the pilot did not arrive home at his apartment until around 23:00. The next sighting is at 01:00, now the 12th of August, when local CCTV showed the pilot leaving his apartment and getting into his car. He drove to Cairns Airport.

As ground staff at the airport, the pilot had security codes for access and was able to walk straight to the hangar. The hangar held three helicopters. The two larger helicopters blocked the hangar door from closing, so the hangar was left open. The third helicopter was a Robinson R44 Raven helicopter, registered in Australia as VH-ERH.

The Robinson R44 was a sixteen-year-old single-engine light utility helicopter with a total of 4,142 flight hours. Nautilus Aviation had registered it ten years before. There was no cockpit voice recorder or flight data recorder installed.

The helicopter keys were routinely left inside helicopters which were parked in hangars. In North Queensland, aircraft operators must secure unattended aircraft, either by storing the aircraft in locked/secured hangars or by removing the keys from the aircraft. In this case, the Robinson R44 was in a hangar, but the hangar had been left open to park the other two helicopters.

It was 01:30 when the pilot pulled the Robinson R44 out of the hangar using detachable ground wheels fitted to the helicopter’s skids. The weather was overcast, with drizzly rain and visibility decreasing.

There were Australian Federal Police officers and airport safety officers on duty, but they were not expecting any flights and did not have a view of the hangar. As the pilot had used authorised security codes, there was no security breach to attract their attention.

The pilot dragged the helicopter onto a helipad and removed the ground wheels, storing them safely before boarding the helicopter.

CCTV footage showed the cockpit lights turn on and then the strobe lights started to flash. At Nautilus, strobe lights were generally left on all the time and the helicopters were shut down with the strobe lights set to on.

This meant that as the pilot turned the battery switch on, the strobe lights automatically started flashing.

The footage showed the helicopter go dark as the strobe lights and the cockpit light were turned off again, again, likely the battery switch turned to off. Then, two minutes later, the cockpit light turned on again but this time without the strobes. The cockpit lights turned off and on again three times over the next few minutes. The strobes were never turned back on.

Once the strobe lights were off, there was nothing to direct the security officers’ attention to the helipad.

Cairns Airport has 24-hour air traffic control services based on the control tower. The controller on duty had dealt with a flight at half past midnight, the last flight of the night.

For the rest of the night, the controller was on sight and available for unscheduled flights if needed, for example, search and rescue operations or diverted flights. The next scheduled flight was at 05:00.

The controller stayed on the top floor of the control tower but as there were no scheduled flights, the controller was not expected to stay at his console. Air Traffic Control systems are not designed to protect against unauthorised departures. Instead, the controller worked on an internal training course and various clerical tasks. The speakers were on, which allowed the controller to maintain a listening watch for unscheduled flights.

The controller was taking a break, as standard during low-traffic overnight periods, sitting on a recliner chair with limited view of the airfield, when there was a click on the radio. It was 01:42. The controller stood and checked the console at 01:43 for any new flight plans. There were not.

The pilot started the Robinson R44, which appeared on the console about 90 seconds later. By now, the controller was back on the recliner chair with no idea that an unauthorised helicopter was preparing for departure.

The main rotor began to rotate. At 01:46, the helicopter lifted off of the helipad.

After climbing to about 500 feet, the helicopter turned left, heading south and following a highway directly towards Cairns city centre. The area was well lit up, with plenty of artificial lighting from the city buildings and street lighting.

The pilot then made a slight turn to fly directly towards the pilot’s apartment. He overflew the apartment and continued towards the coastline, where he orbited the Cairns wharf complex. Then the helicopter flew north around the Cairns Marian before following the coastline back.

Helicopters flying over populated areas are required to fly at least 1,000 feet above the highest feature or obstacle within a 300-metre radius. The Robinson R44’s altitude was 500 feet or below throughout the flight.

The GPS data ended there, 70 seconds before the collision. The ATSB noted that this was consistent with other units of the same model that they have recovered from accident sites.

The final moments of the flight were recorded on ground-based radar, which showed the Robinson R44 tacking back along the coast towards the airport. Had the pilot continued to the airport, he might have landed safely. Although he would have thrown away his career, he would have at least kept his life.

However, instead, he turned again, flying over his apartment for a second time before returning to the coast. He followed the coast towards the marina for about one kilometre.

At 01:51, security cameras briefly captured the helicopter abruptly pitching up before descending steeply.

Then the helicopter crashed into the top of the Cairns Doubletree hotel, instantly killing the pilot.

The main rotor struck the building first, with parts of the blades found in the top floor hotel rooms. The rest of the helicopter was on the roof, with the cockpit, systems and engine severely damaged in the impact. The fuel caught on fire.

Although it’s impossible to know for sure because of the damage, there’s no indication of any mechanical issues with the helicopter. There was no sign of an in-flight fire. The tail boom was intact, so the tail rotor did not fail.

There was no damage to the skids, which shows that the helicopter was not upright (for example trying to land on the roof).

Instead, it quickly became clear that the helicopter was almost upside down (inverted) and struck the hotel room window blades first.

An elderly couple were fast asleep in the room when the helicopter blades struck their window, with the main rotor blade tip breaking off into the room. They were thankfully not injured by the shattered piece of the rotor blade tip flying through the room, although they were later taken to hospital to be treated for smoke inhalation.

The rest of the rotor blade broke off in the room next door, taking out the window and leaving a clear witness mark on the wall. This damage showed that the main rotors were travelling at speed, consistent with the engine at a high-power setting.  I can only assume that this room was unoccupied as there were no reports of injuries despite the violence of the impact.

More pieces of the rotor blade were found in the parkland across the road, showing the strength with which they impacted the windows. The hotel quickly evacuated all guests and reported no further injuries.

Toxicology tests showed that the pilot had significant blood-alcohol content at the time of death and clearly still intoxicated during the flight and crash. The pilot’s decision making skills were clearly severely impaired. His level of inebriation would also have had a great effect on his coordination and reaction time.

This three-minute ATSB video recreates the route and the final moments of the flight:

The ATSB’s final conclusion is essentially a shrug of the shoulders.

For reasons unknown, pilot actions resulted in a collision with a building while conducting an unauthorised and unnecessary flight, while affected by alcohol, late at nights and at low heights over a built-up area, and without night flying endorsements.

There’s no way of knowing why the pilot decided that night that it was a good idea to steal the Robinson R44 and take it for a low-level flight over Cairns.

He had turned off the strobe lights to conceal his departure, showing that he knew there would be consequences if he got caught. He flew the helicopter for just five minutes, but those five minutes must have been heavily taxing. He was not rated for night flight in Australia and had never flown a Robinson R44 at night before.  Flying at low level would have required intense concentration, with constant control inputs.

And all this at 2am, after a night of heavy drinking.

There’s no evidence that he meant to crash the helicopter. Rather, he seemed to have been on a sightseeing tour, flying over his apartment and Cairns wharf, perhaps a goodbye flight before leaving for Horn Island. Tired and drunk, he must have been exhausted.

The sharp pitch-up moment captured on camera may have been the pilot seeing the building at the last minute, pitching up abruptly to try to increase clearance. As a result of the pitch up, the helicopter would have rapidly lost airspeed and lift.

It’s possible that the main rotor blade stalled. But more likely is that the pilot realised that he had pitched up too aggressively and over-corrected, shoving the cyclic forward for a fast nose-down input. This is a well-known phenomenon known as pilot-induced oscillation, where the pilot overcorrects in one direction and then overcorrects again in the opposite direction.

At some point, either to increase thrust while pitching up or to arrest the sudden descent, the pilot increased the engine power to full.

Either way, only a few hundred feet above the ground, the pilot had only milliseconds in which to react in a helicopter in which he had no recent experience and only 16.8 hours total flight time.

The truth is, the pilot showed surprising technical ability to manage the Robinson R44 for five minutes of low-level flight despite his fatigue and clear inebriation.

I guess in the end, it doesn’t really matter what precisely went wrong. When faced with a sudden problem requiring quick reactions, he simply did not have the mental faculties to deal with it. By the time the helicopter flew into the hotel, it was inverted, crashing into the building blades first. He lost control, losing his life and risking the lives of others, for an inexplicable unauthorised flight.

Dreamliner Crash in Ahmedabad: Air India flight 171

Investigators recovered both of the Enhanced Airborne Flight Recorders from the wreckage of Air India flight 171 earlier this month. Analysts confirmed that they had the data from the Cockpit Voice Recorder but last week, there was concern about the fire damage from the Flight Data Recorder. Today, the BBC reports that investigators have successfully extracted the data from the damaged Flight Data Recorder, which will be crucial in explaining what happened in those seconds after take off.

According to the Times of India, the final report may be released as soon as in a month, which might mean that investigators already have an understanding of the cause.

Near Miss at Midway

The NTSB has released the preliminary report on the runway incursion which caused Southwest Airlines 2504 to perform a last-minute go-around. Both cockpit voice recorders were overwritten, so the primary information is crew interviews and ADS-B data. The crew of Flexjet flight 560, a Bombardier Challenger 350, stated that they did not recognise that they were entering a runway but believed they were crossing a taxiway. They said that they had looked left and right before entering but did not see the Boeing 737 on final approach. The report shows that Southwest flight 2504 crew called “go around” after the 100-foot altitude callout; the aircraft passed less than 200 feet behind the Challenger as it cleared the runway.

Dangerous Design behind the Washington DC Mid-Air Collision

The FAA has already modified the helicopter routes around Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, effective 12th June.

The investigative hearings will take place 30th July to 1st August, which should cover give the key findings. They will be livestreamed on the NTSB YouTube channel.

American Airlines Fire at Denver: What We Know So Far

The NTSB has released the preliminary report which confirms that the fuel leak visible in the video of the aircraft was the cause of the fire.

The leak was caused by bad maintenance: an incorrectly installed lockwire and VSV actuator, which allowed fuel to leak during the flight and taxi.

The emergency door which did not open during the evacuation was found to have the slide jammed in the door. The report confirms that the flaps remained at 0° while the passengers evacuated from the wing, but does not explain why.

CRJ900 Overturns on Canada’s Busiest Runway

TSB Canada has released their preliminary report on the passenger flight (Endeavour Air/Delta Connection) whose wing tip struck the runway after landing causing the aircraft to flip. The report cites the excessive descent rate as a critical factor, as the Bombardier CRJ 900 was descending at 1,110 feet per minute on touchdown, almost double the landing gear’s design limit of 720 feet per minute. As a result, the right main landing gear fractured at touchdown; the right gear folded underneath and the wing struck the runway and detached.

The flight crew reduced thrust from 64% to 43% N1 after encountering wind gusts, but the descent rate increased dramatically in the final seconds. The EGPWS “sink rate” warning sounded 2.6 seconds before touchdown.

Citation II Crashes in San Diego Residential Area During Low-Visibility Approach]

The NTSB has released the preliminary report which confirms some key details. The pilot was certified for single-pilot operations; the person in the right seat was a pilot but it is not clear whether they were acting as crew. The weather was poor with a 200-foot cloud ceiling and visibility of half a mile/one kilometre. The descent profile matches what we saw from the ADSB data. The Citation II was flying at 167 knots at the final approach fix, slowing to 117 knots before hitting the power lines at 500 feet above mean sea levels. The pilot was based at the accident airport which means he was familiar with the approach and the existence of the power lines.

The Missing Bolts from Alaska Airlines flight 1282

This final report can be expected in the next few weeks as the board summary has already been released, including the probable cause.

We determined that the probable cause of this accident was the in-flight separation of the left MED plug due to Boeing’s failure to provide adequate training, guidance, and oversight necessary to ensure that manufacturing personnel could consistently and correctly comply with its parts removal process, which was intended to document and ensure that the securing bolts and hardware that were removed to facilitate rework during the manufacturing process were properly reinstalled. Contributing to the accident was the FAA’s ineffective compliance enforcement surveillance and audit planning activities, which failed to adequately identify and ensure that Boeing addressed the repetitive and systemic nonconformance issues associated with its parts removal process.

GA Fuel Exhaustion Case

I had made a note about a GA flight in 2023 in which a Piper PA-28-181 crashed during an emergency landing 1.5 miles short of the airport. It was already clearly a case of fuel exhaustion and there weren’t many additional details, so I didn’t write about it here.

According to the final report, the pilot had 48 gallons of fuel on board and assumed he’d be able to fly for five hours. At about 4 hours and 20 minutes, the pilot realised that the fuel was low and turned the fuel pump on. Shortly after that, the engine quit. He switched to the other tank and the engine restarted and then quit again. He landed on a gravel road, hitting a tree with the right wing in the process.

I include it here only for this FAA photo from the docket, which shows the amount of fuel recovered from the left fuel tank.

If you have other updates or information, please leave them in the comments!

The aircraft was a 50-year-old Beechcraft King Air E-90, registered in the US as N1UC (serial number LW-140) with a valid airworthiness certificate until June 2031. At the time of the accident, the King Air had 10,922 total airframe hours and 9,505 cycles. The pilot holds an Airline Transport Pilot certificate, the highest level of pilot certification issued by the FAA, with an ATP rating for Airplane Multi-engine Land such as the King Air. He holds type ratings for a wide range of complex aircraft including the Airbus A320, Boeing 727 and 747, the Beechjet 400, the Cessna Citation 500 and others. Although his flight hours have not been released, they likely exceed that of the King Air.

The flight departed normally from Missouri, where the pilot is based, for a short private flight to New Century AirCenter in Gardner, Kansas. (Fox News reported that flight originated from Butler Municipal Airport, which caused me a good 20 minutes of confusion, as Butler Municipal Airport is in Georgia. The flight actually departed from Butler Memorial Airport (KBUM), which is located in Missouri.)

There were two on board: the pilot and one passenger. The weather in Kansas was warm with light winds and broken clouds at 3,400 feet. They were in the final phase of their flight, flying south on approach to runway 18 at New Century AirCenter.

The data on ADS-B Exchange shows that the King Air had slowed to 140 knots for the approach as it crossed the freeway. According to early reports, the left engine failed.

With the right engine still producing power, the King Air veered to the left, still descending. At about 13:15 local time, the plane crash-landed onto the roof of the Butler Avionics hangar.

(Butler Avionics bears no connection to Butler Memorial Airport or Butler Municipal Airport, but changed its name from King Avionics to Butler Avionics after it was acquired by the Butler National Corporation in 2010. Butler National Corporation also has nothing to do with Butler Memorial Airport or Butler Municipal Airport but took the name in 1960 after the National Connector Corporation merged with an aviation research firm owned by the Butler family. Herewith endeth my brief obsession with all the Butler references in this case.)

The pilot is said to have then lost control of the aircraft but it sure looks like he managed to flare as the King Air clearly came down on top of the hangar roof as opposed to crashing into it. It seems like the aircraft must have spun almost 180° as they impacted, likely the propeller of the working right engine digging into the roof.

First responders quickly arrived on the scene, including the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office, Kansas Highway Patrol, Fire District #1, and MED-ACT.

The firefighters from Fire District #1 set up a ladder to reach the roof and laid down foam suppressant as fuel was leaking into the hangar below. The pilot and his passenger were able to release their safety restraints and climb out of the aircraft, with firefighters quickly concluding that they had only “non-life-threatening injuries”. Fire crews helped the two down from the roof and transported them to a nearby hospital for treatment of minor injuries. None of the workers inside the hangar was injured, although that must have been quite a shock!  The airport closed to traffic for about an hour but there was very little disruption to operations.

This 90-second clip showing aerial footage of airport and the hangar was posted to a Russian-language aviation channel on Telegram.

 2025.06.16. Emergency landing of Beechcraft E90 King Air N1UC on the roof of a hangar at New Century AirCenter (JCI/KIXD), Kansas state. The aircraft lost power in the left engine and as a result fell onto the hangar roof during approach to runway 18. The pilot (73) and his passenger (30) received minor, non-life-threatening injuries. ABC News by KMBC

This video isn’t from ABC News, so I think the credit refers to where the crash information was sourced, rather than the video itself. However, I think it might be the full video from News Chopper 9, based on this excerpt posted on KMBC 9’s YouTube channel.

The hangar stood up relatively well to being landed on with a King Air. Truthfully, the King Air could not have picked a better place to land, as Butler Avionics specialise in King Air maintenance and repair.

Kansas Highway Patrol filed a report that a vehicle crashed into a building (“Hit and Run: No”) 500 feet west of Old U56. According to the crash log, a mechanical malfunction caused the left engine to become inoperable.

So far no CCTV or ATC recordings from the incident have been released. A poster from the local area on the r/aviation subreddit said that they were cleared to land on Runway 18 but then called for a go-around due to the failure of the left engine.

Another poster attempted to assess the damage:

  Looks like the left wing is a little wonky. The left engine is totally fubar. The right engine looks equally fooked. The gear probably won’t hold the weight anymore. Fuselage skin needs exfoliation and a shit ton of moisturizer.

Another comment on the subject was from an A&P mechanic

 Honestly, kudos to the guys at Beechcraft. I would not have expected an aluminum plane to seemingly win in a fight with a steel building, but that King Air looks like it could be made airworthy again.

Full credit to the hangar as well, which stood firm, supporting the King Air 90 and protecting those underneath.

There is not yet any information on what happened to the left engine, one of two Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6A turboprop engines equipped with Raisbeck four-bladed propellers. Juan Brown reports that the left engine was not feathered, which should be an instinctive reaction in the event of an engine failure, although he also added that one blade “looks like it’s nearly twisted into the feathered condition”.

Juan Brown believes that a key point for the investigation will be to ascertain whether this was an actual engine failure or a practice single-engine approach. He says that the King Air was travelling at 86-87 knots before crashing into the hangar while the minimum control speed for the King Air with an engine inoperative (V_mc) is 86 knots, so it is not clear to me why the very experienced pilot lost control. Juan Brown further reports that the aircraft was travelling at 81 knots at time of impact, but this seems to be based on ADS-B data which is notoriously unreliable at low level.

Bryan Johnson, the executive director of the Johnson County Airport Commission, expressed relief that no one was seriously injured.

 Anytime the call goes out that a plane goes into a hangar building, it stings a bit. But again that’s why you’ve got professionals to address the immediate needs of those on the aircraft and make sure everyone’s safe on the ground too.

The airport staff have reported that they are collaborating with the NTSB and the FAA for a formal investigation into the cause of the crash.

Full credit to @jpdemer5 who commented on Youtube with “King on a Hot Tin Roof” which I promptly stole to use as the title of this post.

Air India flight 171 was a scheduled passenger flight from Ahmedabad to London Gatwick, UK which crashed just 45 seconds after departure, impacting a medical school dining hall in the Meghani area of the city.

Ahmedabad Airport, officially the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport (SVPIA), located in Gujarat, is the seventh busiest airport in India, handling 13 million passengers last year. The single runway, 05/23, is 3,505 metres long (11,500 feet). The airport elevation is 189 feet above mean sea level.

Air India was re-acquired by the Tata Group (the original founders) three years ago, India’s largest multinational business which owns many global brands including the aerospace manufacturer Tata Advanced Systems Limited, Taj Hotels, Jaguar Land Rover and Tata Starbucks.

The aircraft was a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner registered in India as VT-ANB, serial number 36279.  This is the first fatal crash of a Boeing 787. Air India has a fleet of 27 Boeing 787-8 Dreamliners; VT-ANB was their second Dreamliner, manufactured in 2013 and delivered to Air India in January 2014.

That morning, the aircraft flew from Delhi to Ahmedabad as Air India flight 423. At Ahmedabad, 220 passengers boarded for the nine-hour flight to London manned by two flight crew and ten cabin crew. The majority were Indian nationals with 53 British, one Canadian and seven Portuguese listed on the manifest.

The captain of the flight had 8,200 hours flight experience and according to The Indian Express was just a few months from retirement. The first officer had 1,100 hours flight time.

The departure was scheduled for 13:10 local time but the aircraft actually departed at 13:39.

Initial reports made much of the fact that on FlightRadar24, the aircraft appeared to enter the runway at an intersection without backtracking, meaning that they did not make full use of the runway., This is untrue: ADS-B data, which is what FlightRadar24 use, is notoriously unreliable on the ground and a quick check of previous departures of flight 171 all show the same data artefact. FlightRadar24 have since confirmed this:

Additional processing confirms #AI171 departed using the full length of Runway 23 at Ahmedabad. RWY 23 is 11,499 feet long. The aircraft backtracked to the end of the runway before beginning its take-off roll.

The weather was hot: the METAR for the crash time (VAAH 120700Z 25006KT 6000 NSC 36/19 Q1001 NOSIG) shows a slight crosswind for runway 23, with good visibility and temperature of 37°C, standard conditions for June in Ahmedabad.

This CCTV video shows the aircraft rolling and then departing from the runway. It certainly lifts off slowly; however, it was hot and the Boeing would have been heavy with a full load of passengers packed for travel to the UK and fuel for the nine-hour flight.

It is not possible to see from the video whether the aircraft was correctly configured for take-off. The aircraft climbed away and according to the ASD-B data, reached a height of 625 feet before falling out of the sky.

Business Today quotes a statement from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) that one of the flight crew made a distress call to declare an emergency.

As per ATC, the aircraft departed from Ahmedabad at 1339 IST (0809 UTC) from Runway 23. It gave a MAYDAY call to ATC, but thereafter no response was given by the aircraft to the calls made by ATC. The aircraft, immediately after departure from Runway 23, fell on the ground outside the airport perimeter. Heavy black smoke was seen coming from the accident site.

A bystander interviewed for BBC News said that they heard a loud noise before the crash. “It sounded like a bomb blast.”

Another bystander told the Times of India that he’d heard something.

I have my office 200 metres from here. As soon as I stepped out of the office, I heard a very loud noise, and smoke filled the area suddenly… When I reached the spot, I saw debris scattered here, there was a fire, and smoke was billowing here. Nothing was visible. We then came to know that the wings of the aircraft fell here and that an aircraft crashed.”

All we know for sure is that the Boeing Dreamliner came down just 1.5 km (less than a mile), crashing into the grounds of the Civil Hospital Ahmedabad, a local medical college. The explosion and fire on impact were particularly intense as the aircraft was fully fuelled, leading to many being trapped within the building.

The Times of India reported that three teams consisting of 90 personnel were immediately dispatched from Gandhinagar with another three teams dispatched from Vadodara. Their immediate focus was to set up a “green corridor” to transport the injured to hospitals.

However, a source reported that the majority of those transported to the hospital were already dead.

There was one survivor, a British national sitting in seat 11A who was miraculously able to climb out of the emergency exit with relatively minor injuries.

The Indian Express created this image from Boeing and Reuters information, showing the identifiable parts of the aircraft:

At least 50 people on the ground were taken to the hospital to be treated for their injuries. As of this afternoon,  the BBC has updated that there were eight confirmed fatalities in addition to the 241 passengers who lost their lives (four medical students and four relatives of other students).

All flights were suspended from the airport and Indian Railway put on additional trains to the airport to help transport stranded passengers to other major cities.

ANI News reported that the survivor from seat 11A also heard a bang. “Thirty seconds after take-off, there was a loud noise and then the plane crashed. It all happened so quickly.” However, a later interview for DD News, cited in the Guardian, makes no mention of hearing a sound before the crash.

When the flight took off, within five to 10 seconds it felt like it was stuck in the air. Suddenly, the lights started flickering – green and white.

The aircraft wasn’t gaining altitude and was just gliding before it suddenly slammed into a building and exploded. At first, I thought I was dead. Later, I realised I was still alive and saw an opening in the fuselage.

There are many analyses of the videos of the flight, however, the quality of the videos is of dubious quality. Although the landing gear is clearly not raised, it is in my opinion not possible to definitively tell if the flaps and slats, used to gain lift on take-off, are correctly configured. Similarly, one video has what seems to be a clear sound  of the Ram Air Turbine (RAT) being deployed, which would indicate a loss of power. However, the sound does not appear on another video taken at a similar distance. With this video quality, I don’t feel confident that it had definitely deployed, although the flickering lights seen by the surviving passenger is a further sign of a possible power fluctuation issue.

The very high nose-up attitude in the videos has been cited as the crew pulling the aircraft into a stall, but as the captain had three decades of experience, I find this hard to swallow. I think that it is more likely that the flight crew were not in a position to do anything to stop the Boeing from crashing and were simply trying to land as slowly and as flatly as possible.

There are a few credible theories floating around as to the cause the crash.

Misconfigured

One theory is that the flaps and slats were not extended before take-off, which caused the low and slow departure. However, the Boeing lifts off and seems to reach a positive rate of climb, despite being heavy on a hot day. It’s possible but the quality of the videos that have been passed around so far are not good enough for me to feel confident. This also does not explain why the RAT deployed (if it did).

Another theory is that the aircraft was correctly configured for take-off but, as they climbed over 500 feet, a flight crew member retracted the flaps instead of the landing gear, causing a sudden loss of lift. This has happened before, and we just recently looked at an action slip by the pilot flying, who accidentally reduced thrust on take-off. However, this theory is more dubious. It also seems to be based on the claim that the aircraft has no flaps set in the final moments of the video, but presuming the flaps were correctly set to fully extended, reaching for the lever and suddenly retracting them would allow only one stage of flaps to be changed. It is not possible to retract full flaps in a single movement, believing that you are raising the landing gear.

Engine Failure

The loss of power could certainly be explained by an engine failure. However, the current evidence points to a double engine failure, as the Boeing Dreamliner should have been able to maintain altitude with a single engine (if configured correctly).  With the landing gear down and the flaps potentially misconfigured, the heavy aircraft may have struggled with only one engine, but in the videos, there’s also no visible sign of asymmetric power, which should be easier to spot than the position of the flaps.

There are only a few reasons why both engines would fail at the same time. There are a few instances of one engine failing and the crew mistakenly shutting down the working engine, but there was hardly enough time for such a mistake in this instance. Contaminated fuel is another potential cause, but no other aircraft suffered issues and the airport re-opened just a few hours later, which means that they did not believe there was any issue with their jet fuel. More likely is a bird strike, as the airport is in the Sabarmati river basin, where bird activity peaks during the monsoon season (June to September). But this is not conclusive: there are no signs of smoke or fuel leakage from the engines and I have seen no reports of bird remains at or near the crash site.

Something Else

But what?

The clearest evidence at this point is that the landing gear was still extended, when it should have been retracted as soon as they had a positive rate of climb. That could be a mistake. I think it is more likely that the crew were distracted by some other failure. Or it’s possible that they did not have the hydraulic pressure to raise them.

Eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable so a key question is whether the reports of a loud “bang” are correct and related to the flight. Definitive proof that the RAT had deployed would imply a systems failure, rather than a configuration error.

We probably won’t have to wait for long. It should be possible to quickly determine whether the engines had power, despite the damage. Today, the Flight Data Recorder was recovered, which, assuming it is readable, will give us the key metrics of the take off and the descent. If the Cockpit Voice Recorder is recovered (and I see no reason why it wouldn’t be, the photographs of the tail show that it did not suffer in the fire) then that will tell us what the flight crew were doing.

For now, though,  there’s no definitive explanation and we shall have to await further updates.

Of course, that doesn’t stop the media from headlining their own theories. The New York Times immediately cited “concerns about the safety of the Boeing 787” and that the crash was “renewing scrutiny of [Boeing’s] safety record after a years-long quality crisis”, despite the fact that the Boeing in question had flown 11 years with no issues. I am not absolving Boeing of their issues but as of right now, there is no evidence that the Dreamliner is unsafe. India’s DGCA has understandably ordered enhanced inspections on all Air India Boeing 787‑8/9s with General Electric GEnx engines. At this stage, there’s no indication that the aircraft will be grounded.

My favourite headline, though, was posted as a screenshot to PPRuNe.

Unusual for ‘state of the art’ plane to crash at take-off, expert says

Seems like a safe statement to make. That particular expert went on to say that the investigation should focus on security at the airport because “basically, the aircraft these days, they sort of fly themselves”.

India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has confirmed that the Director General of the AAIB is in Ahmedabad with an investigation team. The American NTSB  will lead US team in their role as the state of manufacture. General Electric, the engine manufacturer, will also be a part of that team. The British AAIB has deployed a team to assist the investigation, representing the 53 British passengers on board (including the only survivor). A preliminary report will be expected within 30 days of the crash.

A gentleman in his forties disembarked the aircraft and walked to the Customs and Border Protection checkpoint. There, he explained that he’d just arrived on SAS flight 931 but seemed to have left his passport on the aircraft.

The immigration official sent him to speak to customer service so that someone could page Scandinavian Airlines staff to look for the passport.

The gentleman explained to the customer services staff that he’d just arrived from Copenhagen but had left his documents on the plane. The staff member asked for specifics to help the airline staff find it. The gentleman told him that it was a US passport and that he’d been sitting in seat 48G.

The staff member tried to contact someone from Scandinavian Airlines and in the meantime, he told an immigration officer what had happened. This immigration officer said he was happy to process the gentleman while they waited for someone from the airline to pick up the passport.

But when the immigration officer tried to look him up, he found that the gentleman wasn’t listed as a passenger on SAS flight 931. Surprised, he broadened his search, but the officer couldn’t find any record of the gentleman arriving on any international flight that day. The Customs and Border Protection system normally holds the details of all passengers on flights into the US.

He asked the gentleman to write down his name, date of birth and flight information and then tried to search again. Nothing. As far as US immigration was concerned, the gentleman didn’t exist.

The immigration officer called for a supervisor for help. The officers then searched the gentleman’s bag and found two identification cards: one Russian and one Israeli. Neither of these documents are valid for travel into the United States. Both Russian and Israeli citizens must have a valid passport; in addition, Russian citizens need a VISA (Visitors International Stay Admission) and Israeli citizens require an ESTA (Electronic System for Travel Authorizations) under the visa waiver program.

The gentleman showed the officers a photograph showing part of a passport. That partial page showed the date of birth and passport number but not the photograph of the passport holder.

The officers searched using the passport number, but again, there was no record of that passport in the Customs and Border Protection system.

They found that there was no record of him in any system: not in Customs and Border Prection, not in the ESTA database where any Israeli applications would be recorded, and not in the US Department of State VISA Database.

The officer had never before encountered a situation where a passenger in his inspection area was not already in the system.

By this time, they had accounted for all passengers listed on the passenger manifest for SAS flight 931. In fact, every passenger who had arrived at LAX on a European flight before 15:00 that day had been through Customs and Border Control. There were no additional passengers left to process, but the gentleman had not yet been processed.

It dawned on the supervisor that she was dealing with a stowaway. The gentleman was escorted to the Admissibility Review Unit where he was held for further questioning.

Meanwhile, the Scandinavian Airlines crew had not found any missing passports on the aircraft. They came to the same conclusion: they were “plus one” as the station manager put it, for the passenger load for the flight. The gentleman wasn’t on the passenger manifest but the cabin crew recognised him as being on the flight. In fact, they’d noticed him because he had kept changing seats. None of the cabin crew had seen his boarding pass.

The cabin crew counted the passengers in each section, to ensure that the aircraft was balanced for take-off and landing. However, no one had totalled the section counts, which would have made it immediately obvious that they had an extra passenger on board. In what seemed more like luck than good management, the stowaway had remained undetected.

Back at the Admissibility Review Unit, a Russian-speaking Customs and Border Patrol officer came to act as a translator for the interview and the gentleman was read his rights in Russian and in English.

During questioning, the gentleman said that he had a PhD in economics and marketing and had worked in Russia as an economist. He said he hadn’t slept in three days and wasn’t sure if he’d had a ticket for the flight to the US. He couldn’t or wouldn’t explain when he’d arrived in Copenhagen or what he was doing there. When asked how he got through security without a ticket, he said he had no idea.

He gave the interviewers permission to scroll through the photographs on his phone. The most recent photograph was of a flight information screen with Danish text, presumably taken in Copenhagen. The next photographs showed screenshots of a map, but they weren’t able to identify the city. Another held the details of a hostel in Kiel, Germany. The gentleman then turned his phone off.

An FBI special agent filed a criminal complaint at the United States District Court. The United States Magistrate Judge found that there was probable cause to arrest the gentleman on a charge of Stowaway on an Aircraft in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2199.

In the US, stowing away is a felony offense, where stowing away is defined as boarding or entering without the consent of the owner or person in command of any vessel or aircraft, with the intent to obtain transportation. The charge carries a prison sentence of up to five years or a fine or both.

But how did he get onto the aircraft in the first place?

At Copenhagen Airport, CCTV showed that he’d arrived at the metro terminal in the late afternoon on the 3rd of November, the day before he arrived in Los Angeles. He did not have a ticket for any flight that day. Apparently he walked closely behind another passenger with a valid boarding pass to get through the security turnstile. He was now in Concourse C which primarily handles international departures outside of Schengen. At passport control, he showed both his Israeli and Russian passports to the Danish border police.

His Russian passport did not have any stamps or visas showing his entry into Schengen, the area of European Union countries without internal borders, He did have a valid visa for entry on his Israeli passport, but he had overstayed, breaking the rules of his visa. That meant he was now in Denmark illegally.

Worse, the gentleman told the passport control officer that he was not actually leaving. He explained that he didn’t have a ticket but was just walking through the airport to find out if he could travel on his current documents.

The Danish Border police took both passports and told him to stay put. He was to remain in the departures terminal until they worked out what they were supposed to do about his overstay.

It is not clear how long they expected him to wait.

Hours passed. It was late evening when, according to the representative of the Danish Border police, he first attempted to leave. According to the police report, staff from Scandinavian Airlines said that he had attempted to board a flight to Bangkok using his Russian ID card, not valid for travel, and a piece of paper with Cyrillic writing on it. The gate staff checked the flight manifest and confirmed that there was no record of this passenger and turned him away.

In the early hours of the morning, he tried again, this time attempting to board a flight to London. Again, the gate staff checked his documents and refused to let him onto the plane.

It was about 8am when he joined the queue to board Scandinavian Airlines flight 931 to Los Angeles. This time, he managed to get past the gate staff and onto the aircraft without anyone stopping him. He looked around business class, where a cabin crew member offered to help him find his seat. He retreated to economy and then sat down in seat 36D shortly before departure. The crew finalised the flight information listing 183 passengers. However, there were actually 184 passengers on board.

During the ten-hour flight, he moved through a series of unassigned seats, managing to get two meals at each meal service. One crew member noticed him talking to other passengers on the flight, who seemed to ignore him. Another remembers asking him to return to his seat, at which point he moved to a new unassigned seat. Apparently, he caused an issue when tried to take some chocolate which belonged to the cabin crew.

No one noticed that he was not supposed to be on the flight at all.

When the flight arrived in Los Angeles, CCTV captured him chatting to another passenger as they walked through the arrival area. He asked the passenger for their phone number, which he received. They separated as they reached the checkpoint.

The gentleman spoke to the immigration official, which is when he said he’d left his US passport on the plane.

He remained in custody for almost four months until the trial started.

In court, the federal public defender challenged the Copenhagen Airport evidence, arguing that the police officer’s report relied on hearsay. They wanted the second hand information to be excluded from the case: the conversation between the gentleman and the border police as well as the claim that he attempted to board two other flights at Copenhagen. This was because many of the statements in the report written by the Copenhagen Airport Police Officer did not give any details as to who had given a statement. There were just vague references such as “staff at the gate informed police” that he had attempted to board, or that the gentleman had told “another officer” that he was walking by the airport and decided to see if he could travel. The defence asked that all of the police officer’s testimony quoting unnamed and unknown witnesses be excluded, especially as none of the CCTV footage from Copenhagen showed the gentleman attempting to board other flights.

Unfortunately, this did not help the gentleman very much, as he clearly had boarded the aircraft without a boarding pass and flown to Los Angeles. Eleven witnesses who had interacted with the gentleman were called, and the evidence included the gentleman’s green hat, which presumably made it easy to spot him on other CCTV recordings.

After a three-day trial, the jury found him guilty under the offence of 18 U.S.C. § 2199 STOWAWAY ON AN AIRCRAFT.

His defence asked that the sentence be limited to the four months of time served with no restrictions on his release, as he was likely to be deported as soon as he finished his jail time. They showed documents from his family members and friends that said he had recently endured personal difficulties, which led to lack of sleep and anxiety. He was described as kind, responsible and helpful. The gentleman had no prior convictions and no criminal history.

The defence further argued that the gentleman not be asked to to pay restitution to Scandinavian Airlines. Restitution is to compensate victims but, the defence pointed out that it was not a full flight, and there were many empty seats in economy. Thus, the defence argued, the airline did not suffer any financial loss (although I’m wondering about the chocolate taken from the cabin crew).

The gentleman was given a sentence of time served and all fines were waived. However, he was also told to pay $2,174.90 in restitution, which seems likely to be the Scandinavian Airlines ticket.

His family spoke to Russian media and said that he really did have an education as an economist but had never worked in that profession. He had suffered family losses and had been living off of his savings. Earlier that year, he’d moved back to Israel and became distant, not responding to messages. By September/October, he had fallen out of touch with all his relatives, other than mentioning that he was in Paris. No one knew what he was doing there or how he had ended up in Paris, let alone Copenhagen.

When this first happened, I looked for more information on stowaway statistics. Almost every reference was about wheel-well stowaways. However, I found a 2010 case of a stowaway posing on a passenger on a commercial flight. A young Asian man in Hong Kong boarded an Air Canada flight to Vancouver disguised as an elderly white man. Canadian media reported that he wore glasses, a brown cardigan sweater, a leather flat cap and a silicon mask known as The Elder which retails for over $500.

At the gate, he should have been asked to show his passport. However, instead he showed the gate staff a loyalty card for Air Canada’s frequent flyers, which does not include date of birth, and a boarding pass that belonged to a 55-year-old American man.

One of the ground crew noticed his youthful-looking hands and the captain was notified. It must have seemed an odd concern to bring up. They were on a tight schedule and he decided to continue with the flight rather than query the situation.

About four hours into the flight, the young man went to the lavatory and took off his mask. The woman sitting next to him refused to let young man return to his seat, apparently holding it for the old man.

Once they arrived in Vancouver, he claimed asylum, which meant he could not be prosecuted for illegally entering Canada. After three months in prison, he was released to live with a family friend as a refugee claimant after paying a $5,000 bond.

In Hong Kong, an airport ground services agent was arrested in connection with the case and found guilty of smuggling documents and boarding passes to migrants. The entire case is documented on Wikipedia.

Meanwhile, our Russian-Israeli gentleman was almost certainly deported. Of course it is none of my business, but I can’t help but wonder where he might have ended up.

There has been no official comment by Scandinavian Airlines but I suspect some gate staff got a serious talking to. Bizarrely, since then, there have been a few other cases of passengers successfully boarding international flights without a ticket. So if you notice the ground staff being particularly strict on your next flight, now you know why!