The aviation world is struggling to understand how a deadly mid-air collision between a passenger plane and military helicopter was able to happen in what one expert described as "the most controlled bit of airspace in the world".
A US Army Black Hawk helicopter with a crew of three collided with an American Airlines jet carrying 64 people seconds before the passenger aircraft was due to land at Washington National airport.
Both aircraft were sent careering into the icy Potomac River on Wednesday night.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpdx6le5l27o
img: Colin Brown, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
The aircraft that crashed in Kazakhstan on Christmas Day, killing 38 people, experienced “external physical and technical interference”, according to preliminary results of an investigation, Azerbaijan Airlines said on Friday.
The plane was flying from the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, to the Russian city of Grozny in Chechnya when it crashed in a field near Aktau in Kazakhstan, hundreds of miles off its planned route. Twenty-nine people survived.
On Friday the head of Russia’s civil aviation agency said the aircraft tried to land in Grozny as the region was under attack by Ukrainian drones.
image credit: Mehmet Mustafa Celik, licensed under: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International
The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) held an awards ceremony on 9th December 2024 celebrating the brilliant women showcasing their engineering excellence and truly engineering a better world.
Several awards were presented including: Young Woman Engineer of the Year, The Mary George Memorial Prize for Apprentices, the Women's Engineer Society (WES) Prize and the Gender Diversity Ambassador Award.
These prestigious engineering industry awards celebrate women working in modern engineering – and aim to help change the perception that engineering is predominantly a career for men by banishing outdated engineering stereotypes of hard hats and dirty overalls.
https://youngwomenengineer.theiet.org/
South Korea's acting leader has ordered an emergency safety inspection of the country's entire airline operations, a day after 179 people were killed in the deadliest plane crash on its soil.
The Jeju Air plane burst into flames as it crash-landed in South Korea's Muan International Airport, killing everyone onboard save for two crew members. The ill-fated plane had skidded off the runway after touching down and crashed into a wall shortly after 09:00 local time.
A South Korean transport official had said that the plane had been attempting to land but was forced to hold off after air traffic control gave a bird strike warning.
Air traffic command later gave permission for the plane to land from the opposite direction, the official said.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clygpxkvx9eo
img: Anton Homma, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
An automated system that helps train wheels grip the tracks failed on one of the trains that crashed head-on in mid-Wales on 21 October, investigators have revealed. The Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) said the westbound train involved in the collision in Talerddig, near Llanbrynmair, in Powys, was fitted with a system to discharge sand automatically on to the rails should the wheels slide when braking.
The system, however, did not appear to work in the crucial moments when the train was braking before the crash. The RAIB said an inspection of the train after the accident showed that the sanding hoses on the leading vehicle of the train were “blocked and apparently unable to discharge sand”.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/nov/05/cause-of-fatal-train-crash-in-wales-revealed
img: Rail Accident Investigation Branch, OGL 3 http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3, via Wikimedia Commons