I couldn’t choose just one incident.
American Airlines 737 plane found with apparent bullet hole after flying from Miami to Colombia
Ground crew at José María Córdova International Airport in Medellín, Colombia, discovered puncture damage consistent with a bullet impact to the right wing of an American Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 registered in the US as N342SX. The aircraft had operated flight AA923 from Miami, Florida to Medellín on the afternoon of February 22. The apparent bullet hole extended through the spoiler with damage to the outlet on the opposite side. Neither the crew nor the passengers noticed anything unusual during the flight.
The aircraft was repaired in Medellín and flew back to Miami on Monday morning as scheduled for flight AA924. From there, the aircraft was transported to Dallas Fort Worth for complete repairs. Colombian authorities believe the 737 was hit while landing in Medellín and are investigating.
Somali Fokker 50 seriously damaged after invading Mogadishu beach
On 10 February 2026, a Fokker 50 registered in Somalia as 6O-YAS, departed Mogadishu’s Aden Abdulle International Airport on the Somali coast, bound for Gaalkacyo. There were five crew members and fifty passengers on board.
A StarSky Fokker 50 crashes shortly after takeoff from Mogadishu Aden Adde International Airport, Somalia.
According to local reports, all passengers have been safely evacuated. pic.twitter.com/pYULsbv2Rm
– Breaking aviation news and videos (@aviationbrk) February 10, 2026
Fifteen minutes into the flight, the crew detected a technical problem and turned around to make an emergency landing. The Fokker 50 landed on runway 23 but the flight crew was unable to stop the plane. The airport, located directly on the coast, does not offer any real margin of overtaking. The Fokker 50 went off the end of the runway and came to rest on a sandy beach at the edge of the Indian Ocean.
Photos taken of the evacuation show a battered turboprop with its right wing broken and waves hitting the fuselage resting in the sand. All passengers and crew were evacuated without serious injuries. An airline spokesperson praised the calmness with which the pilot made his decisions. No information has been released about the nature of the technical failure. The Somali Civil Aviation Authority has opened an investigation.
Another United Airlines flight was forced to divert after a laptop fell through a crack in the cargo hold
United Airlines flight UA748 departed Dulles International Airport in Washington for Geneva. The Boeing 767 was cruising at FL330 (~33,000 feet) off the coast of Maine when the crew asked to divert because a business class passenger’s laptop had slipped through a gap between his seat and the side wall, falling into an inaccessible void above the cargo hold.
We have a minor situation here with a passenger who somehow dropped a laptop over the side wall into the plane’s cargo pit. We don’t know its status, we can’t access it, we can’t see it.
The problem is the risk of fire from the lithium battery: if the laptop is damaged in the fall and suffers a thermal runaway in an inaccessible space, the crew has no way to combat it.
This is the third time a United 767 has been diverted because a laptop falls off the cabin floor. El Autopio writes in more detail about the gap in the Polaris business class seats that is causing the problem (second half of the article). This third event suggests a design and/or certification issue that needs to be resolved.
Two KLM planes collide on the ground, no injuries reported
Two KLM Boeing 737-800s had a costly encounter at Amsterdam Schiphol on the morning of February 21. PH-BCL was being pushed back from gate D54 for flight KL1953 to Athens when it collided with PH-BGC, which had just arrived from Birmingham, England, as KL1040. It’s not clear to me if he was rolling towards gate D29 or if he was standing still at the point of impact. AeroTime and NL Times say the plane was stationary. Aviation.Direct says it was taxiing toward D29. PPRuNe’s ADS-B analysis suggests it stopped short of its parking spot and remained there for about two minutes before the collision. The Aviation Safety Network wikibase entry says it “was taxiing to its parking position.”
Both planes were out of service. The Athens flight took off about four hours later on a replacement plane. Holland Times reports that the Dutch Safety Board (OVV) and the Dutch air traffic control (LVNL) have opened investigations.
I must say that having two of your own planes colliding with each other in your operations center is never a good idea.
How China is masking drone flights in a possible test in Taiwan
Reuters reports that a large Chinese military drone is transmitting false transponder signals while flying over the South China Sea. The call sign, YILO4200, belongs to a long-duration Chinese military drone, but flight tracking data showed it was transmitting registration numbers belonging to other aircraft for at least 23 flights since August 2025.
The drone appeared on Flightradar24 as a sanctioned Belarusian Rada Airlines Il-62 cargo plane, a British RAF Typhoon fighter jet, a North Korean airliner, and an unnamed Gulfstream business jet. In one case, he switched identities between four different planes in 20 minutes; in another, the real Belarusian Il-62 was in the air at the same time as the drone imitating it.
And while cloaking is unlikely to completely fool air traffic controllers or military-grade radars, it could sow time-wasting confusion in a conflict, obscure sensitive surveillance activities or be used for propaganda or disinformation, envoys and intelligence analysts said.
Coast Guard pilot flying with Kristi Noem fired over missing blanket
AVweb shares reports from the Wall Street Journal and the daily mail that a US Coast Guard pilot transporting Kristi Noem, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, was allegedly fired for forgetting a blanket.
The pilot was told to take a commercial flight home, after Noem’s personal blanket was not transferred to a replacement plane during a maintenance-related plane change. The dismissal was reversed when it turned out that no other pilot was immediately available for the return leg.
El Paso flights canceled after FAA imposed then lifted sudden airspace closure over drone issue
On February 10, the FAA abruptly issued a temporary flight restriction closing all airspace below 18,000 feet within a 10-mile radius of El Paso International Airport, initially for 10 days, a scale of closure not seen since September 11, 2001. The temporary flight restriction warned that offending aircraft could be “intercepted, detained and interrogated” and that deadly force could be used against any aircraft that would represent an imminent threat to security.
The shutdown was due to a high-energy anti-drone laser deployed near Fort Bliss. The FAA had previously requested a safety meeting with the Pentagon before any further use of the laser system, scheduled for February 20. However, Customs and Border Protection used the anti-drone laser without coordinating with the FAA, shooting down objects that turned out to be party balloons. Meanwhile, medical evacuation helicopters had to divert 45 miles away. The shutdown was lifted after about eight hours, with conflicting explanations from the White House and Pentagon. The FAA left no doubt that they had closed the airspace precisely because the Pentagon had not provided the safety data it had been requesting.
Military Times reports more that on February 27 the laser system was deployed again, causing a second airspace closure.
This time it was used by the military who apparently shot down a Customs and Border Protection drone. Members of Congress described the situation as “incompetence” and called for independent investigations.
I can’t wait to see what March brings.
