Armchair NTSB

Air Canada In the Dirt-What Happened at NRT

I know this is a little bit late but I wanted to let coverage of the incident disseminate, and fact-finding commence…sadly, there wasn’t really much that was covered about this incident. On July 30, 2018, an Air Canada Boeing 787 Dreamliner operating as AC-5 landed on the B-runway (16 L) at Narita Airport (NRT) without incident. The tower controller instructed the crew to exit via taxiway B7 (at the end of 16L before the threshold of 34R), and then switch to ground controller upon entering the K taxiway. There is a taxiway under construction just before the B7 taxiway as...Read more

ARMCHAIR NTSB: Squawk Codes Gone Wrong

Squawk codes are transponder settings used to identify aircraft in flight. When operating in controlled airspace, every aircraft uses a squawk code assigned to them by ATC. There are 3 codes that are universally used to signal a problem onboard an aircraft: 7500 for hijacking, 7600 for loss of radio communications, and 7700 for an emergency onboard. A jetBlue flight from JFK recently had some communications failure and, unable to use the radio to contact the tower to alert them of the problem, attempted to switch the transponder code to 7600. When ATC sees that an aircraft is having comms...Read more

Nippon Cargo Grounding: What Happened? (Armchair NTSB)

Nippon Cargo is a cargo airline whose main base is out of Narita Airport near Tokyo. In the past the airline was partly owned by All Nippon Airways and Nippon Yusen, Japan’s leading shipping company (commonly known as NYK), however, ANA sold their stake to NYK and NYK fully owns the company. The airline operates a fleet of 11 Boeing 747s and operates around the world. Their airline codes are KZ and NCA, and in this article, Nippon Cargo will be abbreviated as NCA. What Happened to NCA? On June 17, 2018, NCA announced the airline had grounded their entire...Read more

Armchair NTSB Category

Welcome to the Armchair NTSB Category! This category lists posts related to aviation incidents. I’m no expert on aviation safety by any bit, but I do read into the causes and patterns of aircraft accidents and incidents a lot. The posts here will be overviews of select incidents, feature plentiful links to reputable safety sources and my take as to what happened during the incidents. Please note again, this is an opinion column, and anyone quoting this column SHOULD include the sources that I quoted for the columns. I’ll only post on major incidents and ongoing issues with aviation safety,...Read more