June 2008 was a very safety- and technology- oriented month on this blog. It was only few weeks after the crash of the Kalitta Air Boeing 747 in Brussels and the British Airways Boeing 777 incident in London was still in the air. The post about accidents happening close to the airport fence is now one year old but the topic is always hot. Berlin Tempelhof which had the record of the closest habitation is now closed, but the measurement of runway to habitation distance still says a lot.

A “software patch” solving issues with the EclipseJet power control was released in June 2008. This raised questions about use of software in aviation. I’m a fond of modern aircraft but I know that some are surprised that a “bug” can affect bord computers. The loss of the AirFrance Airbus 330 brought the software theme on front stage again. Mikel, an Airbus rated pilot and blogger kindly accepted that I repost her article on the fly-by-wire systems. She posted again on the unreliable airspeed topic again since.

Another safety / technology question I posted about in June 2008 was about use of the metric system in aviation. The units we use are still a mixture of meters, knots, inches or mercury, to name just a few. Even worse, different parts of the world use different units. Read this post to read more about the reasons causing this situation, the resulting hazards, and why it won’t change before long.

Bird strikes were already a concern before the ditching of US Airways 1549. Boeing even mentions in some checklists that flying below 10′000 feet is not recommended. Most of my flying is below 10′000 feet – click here to read more about this topic.

Safety on ground, recently highlighted by the United 1448 runway incursion, is the topic of this post about the ultimate pilot’s challenge: taxiing. If you think the airport in where the United 1448 occured is complex, check the chart of Paris in my post.

I also posted on lighter topics in June 2008, including my survey of overhead room in general aviation cockpits. I can now add the DA42 Twinstar to the list, and it’s not one with much room, unfortunately. Another timeless post was about Understanding Aviation Weather.

It’s also in June 2008 that I posted about a free online JAA ATPL theory questions database and made my Excel ICAO flight plan form available for free. Visit the Freebies page for more free downloads for pilots.

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