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That 737 late turn was hair rising… 
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Encounter over the North Atlantic.
I know this is pretty ordinary stuff, but it still amazes me how close aircraft fly to each other in the middle of nowhere. The Air France was a couple knots faster and he overtook us over the course of about 30 minutes.
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Starting 5 or 6 years ago it was approved for us to offset for wake turbulence avoidance. It’s called SLOP. Strategic Lateral Offset Procedures. Crews can choose 0, 1, or 2 miles right of course. Before SLOP (but after GPS) passengers would never see other planes over the Atlantic. Now with flightaware and WIFI, you can plane-spot from 11A.
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These days you can even Micro-SLOP’ in .1nm increments, primarily for wake turbulence. SLOP also prevents two airplanes from arriving over the same point in opposite directions while in a non-radar environment (ie over the ocean or somewhere like the Amazon). The accuracy of GPS navigation removed some of the random factors of old school navigation, which to some extent almost guaranteed some separation. These days, (without SLOP), 50N30W means you WILL pass over 50N30W and with RVSM you WILL be at the cleared altitude…as will the other guy.
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This had half of europe occupied for hours, yesterday…
A Citation jet going from Jerez in Spain to Cologne in Germany, lost comms and continued north eastwards in a straight line, until it crashed in the baltic sea, as the tanks ran dry.
By all accounts they lost cabin pressure and passed out.
The news of the impending disaster spread fast, as the flight progressed, and anyone who wanted to could follow the progress online.
Here’s Juan Brownes take on the available info.
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Sadly reminiscent of what happened to Payne Stewart in 1999.
Wheels
Yeah I read an article about it.
Four people dead apparently. Really sad thing to happen.
Indeed a sad fate.
Makes me wonder - what‘s plan B if it does not head out to the sea?
Will they look for the blackbox? Or does that not make sense at this point because we know enough?
Yeah, Browne mentions this in the video too.
Yeah. And the fact that it was rather obvious what their fate was, as it unfolded, made it even worse, imo.
AFAIK it was escorted by fighters all the way. This is standard procedure for aircraft without comms that are off flightplan (if there is one) and/or not responding to ATC. Depending on the situation, the option to force the aircraft down will be considered.
I don’t think aircraft of this size has FDR and CVR…? Especially old ones, like this. Could have one installed though.
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CVR is widespread if not mandatory on turboprops and jets. I have a CVR tape of myself flying a King Air B200 during an incident. I have yet to see a civil jet or turbo that does not have CVR
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Really sad accident, one that seems so avoidable considering all the things that had to go wrong to produce that ultimate result.
In the states, under Part 91 (private) turbine powered multi-engine aircraft with less than 10 passenger seats are not required by the FARs to have a CVR, but most do. I think I’ve only flown a handful of Citations that did not, but most of the King Airs I’ve flown didn’t.
Most new jet aircraft have some class of FDR, whether it’s required or not, but they’re still not required unless there are ten or more seats or over a certain gross weight.
ETA:
Here in the states, this had our attention for about 4.5 hours Saturday morning:
I’ve flown into TUP quite a bit, this is bizarre to me.
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I should think this is bizarre to everyone?
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Yeah, but weird stuff like this is only supposed to happen in weird places, not in small towns in middle America.
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They can be pretty weird these days! 
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I almost got a job at Tupelo flying a Cheyenne. I remember two FBO’S, both with hot line-girls* competing to pull corporate traffic to their ramp. One would assume that the would-be pilot here was not one of those hot line-girls. I’ve been trying to find a way to be funny in musing over his choice of Walmart as his intended target. I find it funny. But nothing I come up with is repeatable.
*1989, a different, more beautiful time.
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Flying the world’s first civilian F-16! Looks like Top Aces has acquired 29 Israeli F-16’s for private training purposes …
I’ve always loved the Israeli paint scheme/livery.
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Me too! Ever since watching Iron Eagle… 
I haven’t watched that yt video yet. Does it mention two seaters…? 
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Oh BTW, did y’all hear? The first CAPS deployment of a Cirrus SF50 (Vision Jet) happened, and it worked pretty well it seems. Three lightly injured, plane totalled. But that’s a win.
Edit: huh, I just noticed that this source I posted has the story a bit differently than I remember it from the German news article that I read.
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My question is: if I see a Cirrus dangling from a chute, can I shoot the chute?
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