I’ve had days where departing to a patient from a busy airport in the middle of summer feels like you’re trying to thread a needle (while someone keeps nudging your elbow) 👀 The airspace is saturated, everyone’s talking, and you’re trying to focus on the next event. On days like Read more
Good Crew Resource Management (CRM) doesn’t always look the same. We’re taught that it should look clear and structured. But take the same principles into a really dynamic mission, at night, under pressure, with multiple moving parts and different cultures… And it can start to look a little different! Moving Read more
I still remember flipping my Night Vision Goggles down before departing an industrial site at 2 AM in the UK, knowing there was a wire right in front of us that we had carefully briefed beforehand 🔎 I knew it was there. But I still just couldn’t see it. Even Read more
Sometimes accident chains take minutes, or even hours. But in specific cases: it’s just seconds ⏱️ A study by the US Helicopter Safety Team (USHST) looked at fatal helicopter accidents where pilots unintentionally flew into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC). By analysing accident reports, radar data, and flight paths, they tried Read more
On the night of January 29, 2025, two professional crews flew in night VMC towards one of the most controlled pieces of airspace in the world 🌎 One was a CRJ700 inbound to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. The other was a US Army Black Hawk on a routine NVG Read more
There are accidents that are caused by very loud and obvious things: Mechanical failures, fire warnings, things that are obviously wrong 👀 Then there are accidents caused by sneaky threats that weren’t managed well enough. The Morecambe Bay crash is one of those. On the evening of 27 December 2006, Read more
There’s a phase of flying where everything feels… fine. Even when it probably isn’t! ⚡️ The checks flow, the weather behaves, and nothing really surprises you. You go home thinking, yeah, that was alright. No stress. No drama. No reason to overthink it. The problem is that this is often Read more
For a long time, I (naively) assumed that becoming a better pilot worked something like this: 🔸 Learn from my mistakes🔸 Absorb the wisdom from experienced pilots🔸 Make decisions, log the hours, do it for years ➡️ And then eventually, I’ll have more and better answers to things! Right? Well Read more
The first time I truly understood what it meant to have mental resilience wasn’t in a classroom, it was during my helicopter instrument rating. A good friend and I were going through the course together. We were down to our last pennies. There was no budget for mistakes, no room Read more
Why do helicopters crash? 💥 Every year, EASA releases a great document that helps to answer this question, and shows what’s catching pilots out, what’s killing crew, breaking aircraft, and coming back to screw up flight safety across Europe 🇪🇺 It’s a goldmine of information, so we’re going to show Read more