Aviation News for Today: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

The Good: Our airplane is in assembly at the factoy. It's scheduled to ship to the US in mid-June and will be delivered to us in late July or so, depending on the shipping schedule.


The Bad: N211LS (left, yellow), which I'm supposed to fly tomorrow, is down for maintenance. This is the second time that I've scrubbed a flight in this aircraft due to maintenance, but I guess you just have to have patience when flying.

The Ugly: I stumbled across a CVR transcript and recording of FedEx Flight 705 yesterday. A soon-to-be-fired employee decided that he was going to get a jump-seat ride on a flight from Memphis, whack the crew with a hammer and speargun, take over the aircraft, and fly it into the FedEx headquarters building, Tom Clancy / M. Atta style. The crew managed to put the smack down on the attacker and land the airplane. A key part of this was the captian performing a barrel roll, something that really isn't a good idea in a DC-10 (however, Tex Johnson did one in the first Boeing 707 demonstrator. Bob Hoover also was famous for performing aerobatics in a small business turboprop).