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White Knight II Unveiled

Virgin Galactic unveiled it's latest design, The White Knight II. The jet powered craft will carry the sub orbital Spaceship II aloft. Spaceship Two plans to carry up to twelve passengers who will pay $200,000 for the suborbital trip into space.

In flight meals will not be served.




The aircraft shown above is NOT the actual White Knight II, but rather a trainer for future pilots.

Virgin America Airlines is having a contest called "The Race for Space". Passengers will win tickets for the Spaceship Two.

65,000 people on currently on the waiting list for tickets when flight operations begin.

American Grounds MD-80 Fleet

If you have a ticket on American Airlines today you might want to hit the book shop.

You're not going anywhere soon.

American Airlines, the world's largest carrier, canceled 200 flights today to re-inspect wiring in Boeing Co. MD-80s after federal regulators raised questions during a maintenance audit. American had previously complied with the directive but a recent the FAA audit called documentation into question.

The grounding in voluntary and represents about 9% of American's fleet. It is a response to an Air Worthiness Directive issued by the FAA. AMR, the parent company of American has issued the following statement.

"We are reinspecting the MD-80s to make sure the wiring is installed and secured exactly according to the directive."

The inspection deals with spacers and positioning of wire bundles. The exact function of the wiring was not disclosed and does not pose a safety of flight issue.

The FAA issues Airworthiness Directives on a regular basis to alert carriers of potential problems before they effect safety of flight. American's action today represents a pro-active response to the FAA's increased scrutiny following the recent grounding of the Southwest Airlines grounding of its 737 fleet.

American predicts that the inspection will be completed today and the aircraft will be returning to service throughout the day.

Within the industry the MD-80 is referred to as the "Death Trap". Since entering service in 1980 the manufacturer, McDonald/Douglas and then later Boeing, has modified the design to ensure that deficiencies have been reduced or eliminated.

List of MD-80 mishaps.

NSTB reports on fatal mishaps.

The F-117 Retires Today

DAYTON, Ohio- The F-117 Stealth Fighter, made famous in Desert Storm will be retired today in a ceremony at Wright-Patterson AFB. The aircraft will be moth balled at a classified site. The aircraft will be replaced by the F-22.

Farewell "Unexpected Guest".



More F-117 Nose Art.

Seen Any UFO's Lately?

Gotcha! Welcome to the P-791. One Part Hovercraft. Two Parts Blimp. It's a hybrid airship developed by Lockheed-Martin and flown out the company's Palmdale Plant 42. It's maiden flight was on 31 January, 2006.

Did you spot the skunk on the tail?

If you're wondering, P-791 doesn't mean anything. It's just what the engineers call it. Engineers are queer that way.

Don't you hate when UFO pictures are all fuzzy and out of focus?

Just kidding...here's a better picture.

Airbus A340 Flies with Broken Wing

November 4, 2007, London- Wow! That was an exciting headline. The trick was that the SriLankan Airlines Airbus took of after it had clipped the wing of a 747 during taxi at Heathrow Airport. No biggie.


The British Airways 747 came off the loser in the mishap and sustained more damage. The Sirilakans merely removed the winglet and certified the aircraft for flight.

That's the British 747 on the right.

When the same passengers reboarded the aircraft the next day some of them noticed about five feet missing from the right wing. When the aircrew admitted that the right winglet was missing, some of the passengers balked. There was about a two hour delay as their baggage was off loaded. The Airbus then completed its 10 hour flight to Colombo, Sri Lanka.

The winglets on modern aircraft are there to increase fuel efficiency by redirecting air flow coming off the wings. They are not part of the control systems nor do they provide lift as the wings do. The removal of the winglet, while unusual, did not pose a safety risk to flight.

If you were a passenger on this flight,what would you have done?

P-38 Found on Welsh Beach

On September 27, 1942, Second Lt. Robert F. "Fred" Elliott, 24, of Rich Square, N.C. was having problems with his fuel system. Unable to remedy the situation he made an emergency landing on a beach near Cardiff, Wales. Due to wartime conditions the beach was off limits to the public.

So the P-38 fighter laid there for the next 65 years. Its remains were spotted by a family in July, but it was thought to be an unmanned drone used for aerial target practice from the 1950s. However, freakish weather conditions in the area have revealed the wreckage to be Elliott's aircraft.

The Lightning has been identified using its serial number and other records. It was built in 1941 and reached Britain in 1942 before flying combat missions along the Dutch-Belgian coast. This makes it one of the oldest P-38's known to exist. Among those is the P-38 "Glacier Girl".Glacier Girl-2006

"Glacier Girl" was discovered discovered under 250 feet of ice in Greenland. Having crashed on 15 July, 1942, it had lain there for over fifty years before in was recovered and restored to flying condition. A number of groups have expressed interest in recovering Elliot's plane. It's rusted state makes the probability of its being restored to flying condition highly unlikely.


Robert Elliott (64), is the nephew of pilot Robert Elliott and has spent 30 years researching his wartime career. Less than three months after the crash and after 10 successful combat missions, Elliott was shot down over Tunisia. Neither his P-38 nor his body was ever found. His wartime diary mentions the Welsh crash but isn't very verbose:

"Ditched a P-38 and was uninjured"

Looting of historical sites is a problem in the United Kingdom. British aviation publications have been circumspect about disclosing the exact location, and local Welsh authorities have agreed to keep the plane under surveillance whenever it is exposed by the tides of the Irish Sea, he said. For now, the aircraft is again buried under sand.

F-15 Fleet Grounded After Crash

On 2 November, a F-15C belonging to the Missouri Air National Guard crashed. The pilot was uninjured and reported "structural failure" as the initial cause.
All models of the F-15 Eagle, including the F-15E "Strike Eagle" (pictured above), have been grounded pending the outcome of the official investigation. Combat taskings will be covered by other assets. The aircraft carrier U.S.S. Harry S. Truman (CVN-75)left Norfolk,Virginia on 7 November. This was a planned deployment replacing the U.S.S. Enterprise (CVN-65) currently on station in the Arabian Sea. However it was announced that the Truman will be assuming some of the F-15 combat missions.

The investigation is still on going and for that reason I've held off jumping on the band wagon to report this. The mishap aircraft was 27 years old. This is getting long in tooth for fighter aircraft. Caution is the word of the day for an aging fleet and groundings are a common precautionary response. After the official investigation concludes and a fleet wide inspection completed, the F-15 is expected to return to service.

The crash highlights a structural design flaw in the tail of the F-15 that was identified in the 1990's. Then 9/11 happened. The increased mission tempo brought on by the war has brought renewed focus on Non-destructive Inspections (NDI) to discover and repair defects . The Air Force x-rays the aircraft on a scheduled basis to see if anything is cracking. The grounding will no doubt provide an opportunity to NDI the fleet before anything else happens.

The F-22 "Raptor" is operational and is scheduled to replace the Eagle. The Air Force has ordered 187 of them to replace 688 Eagles. If this incident accelerates the F-15 retirement, it might be a hard row to hoe to get Congress to pay for any more of the 133 million dollar F-22's.

Crash and Burn

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Take Off

Welcome to my brand new blog. To say I'm an "Aviation Fanatic" is putting it mildly. When I was six, I was playing in my yard in Fort Carson, Colorado. The Blue Angels passed over my head at about 200 feet and I was hooked for life.

My Dad was a veteran of World War Two, and I was weaned on episodes of "Twelve O' Clock High". Yes I have copies (plural) of the movie but have never figured out why the T.V. show hasn't made it to DVD.

When I was sixteen I told my parents that I wanted to take gliding lessons. As it happened, the news reported a fatal glider crash at Salinas airport. Talk about bad timing! Mom was horrified. Flying lessons put on back burner.

At the ripe old age of seventeen I started my professional life in aviation by working as a High School intern in the Turbo-Propulsion Lab of the Naval Postgraduate School. I did such a good job, the hired me. Alas, a GSA audit noted that I did not possess a B.S. so I was canned.

Flying lesson were cut short when I joined the Air Force in 1977. I still wanted to fly and had dreams of being a gunner on a AC-130. "Twelve O' Clock High", remember? The recruiter gave me a sob story about only NCO's flying and being an Army brat I took it, hook, line and sinker.

Thus began my life as a crew chief. I crewed F-4's, T-38's, F-16's and the F-117. That's me getting my ride in the F-4E in 1979 and on in the F-16D
in 1989.






I crewed the F-117 during Desert Storm. She was called "Unexpected Guest".

After the Air Force I earned my Airframe and Powerplant license and worked on Navajos for a while. From there I had a stint at McCarren airport here in Las Vegas.

Old crew chiefs never die, they work transient alert somewhere. Which is what I'm happily doing now at Creech AFB.