Traffic on Beatty Road at Archerfield must be surprised sometimes with pilots doing low level departures or approaches off the R10/28 runway

 USA August 24: 
A student pilot on a solo cross-country flight from Meacham Field in Forth Worth USA was killed while trying to land downwind at the Parker County Airport in Texas

The Cessna C152 had departed the north end of runway 35 at WEA when it struck the flat-bed trailer of an eastbound 18-wheeler passing the airport

 August 27 
A Canadian Air Transat Airbus A330 with 291 passengers avoided ditching in the ocean when it made a dramatic  "Deadstick Landing"  to a US air force base in the Azores Is

The Airbus was forced into an  18-minute 100+ mile motorless glide  over the Atlantic Ocean after all of the jet engines had failed

No one was seriously injured in the 90 seconds it took to evacuate 304 POB after landing that fractured all 8 main tyres and part of the runway on rollout

 August 21 
Dick Smith has called for the report into last year's crash of a Whyalla Airlines passenger aircraft into Spencer Gulf in SA to be conducted by an independent agency

The report, not yet released, suggests the crash was caused by use of lean fuel mixtures, which it says was encouraged by chief pilot Kym Brougham

Dick is claiming Federal Transport Minister John Anderson has influenced the release date of the final report into the crash

 August 29 
The Binter Mediterraneo operated twin turbo-prop aircraft was on final approach when it crash-landed on a road some 200m short of the airport runway in Malaga

Spanish radio quoted a survivor, one of the 47 persons on board, saying a propeller on the left wing had stopped as the plane was preparing to land

At least three people were feared dead and some 40 others injured

 August 27 
Police were contacted late yesterday by a pilot reporting that his single engine Piper Cherokee had damaged 5 aircraft

It appears the pilot tried to hand start the PA-32's 300hp Lycoming engine by swinging the propeller

The unrestrained aircraft started suddenly and moved forward about 100 metres damaging 5 aircraft and causing a reported $1.5m repair bill

A highly experienced Pitts instructor lost his life and his student, who was at the controls of the S-2B, badly injured when the Pitts S-2B they were in impacted the ground after a high vertical descent 500' short of the runway at Brookhaven Calabro Airport in the USA last week

Both men were CFIs, the aircraft "stalled and spun while attempting to land" (FAA Report)

 August 27: 
Aaliyah - the American actress and pop singer - was among nine people killed over the week-end when their aircraft impacted the ground shortly after take-off from the Bahamas

Bahamian authorities say one of the US-operated plane's engines suddenly cut out as the plane left the tarmac and crashed into a swamp

 August 28 
Two S-2 Tanker aircraft used for fighting forest fires have collided and crashed in northern California USA, killing both pilots

The incident occurred as the aircraft positioned themselves to dump retardant on a local forest fire near the town of Ukiah, in Mendocino County

The S-2 aircraft are of a Grumman design from the early 1950s used in anti-submarine hunting