I once heard someone describe Admiral Cloudberg's air crash investigation blog as "the best thing on the Internet" and I still think that might be true. She is a great researcher and a superb writer, which stands out all the more these days in these fallen times of load-bearing AI slop. Her blog is beloved of both aviation geeks and, for obvious reasons, SREs (and other engineers).

She recently posted what's basically her magnum opus, on the Potomac river midair collision.[0] It's the length of a short book. I'm working my way through it; I'm taking a flight today, and I'll probably read it on the plane tonight.

This article, on how an A380 with 469 souls aboard almost crashed, but didn't, is one of her best. I like it because it's a happy ending, and a story of the combined effects of good engineering design (the astonishing degree of redundancy built into the A380 proved just enough to prevent catastrophe), and human troubleshooting under pressure in the cockpit by some smart people with vast experience who remained calm throughout. (Another favorite article of her, on the Air France 447 crash, tells the exact opposite story: poor systems design combined with pilots basically losing the most basic ability to aviate in the heat of the moment. That one is a much darker read.[1])

[0] https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/reaping-the-whirlwind-in... [1] https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/the-long-way-down-the-cr...