50 episodes listed below
Aviation headlines through an engineering lens.
STRUCK follows aerospace engineering where design choices meet aircraft, regulators, manufacturers, and weather. Its conversations move from Boeing and Airbus news to EVTOLs, autonomous flight, lightning strikes, certification, and crash questions.
PRESS PLAY
STRUCK treats aviation news as the visible surface of engineering decisions. A Boeing 737 crash, a Joby S4 crash, a Boeing 737 MAX documentary, or a dispute between Airbus and Qatar Airways is not left as a headline. The show follows the machinery underneath. Systems get classified. Sensors get chosen. Regulators step in. Suppliers create downstream problems. Pilots become part of the design assumption. That practical cause-and-effect thinking gives the show its shape. Lightning protection is not a side topic; it is one of the show’s organizing concerns, especially when aircraft, fuel tanks, thunderstorms, radomes, and composite structures enter the conversation. EVTOL coverage is another recurring lane, with Joby, Volocopter, Lilium, Bell, Eve, Bristow, Airbus, City Airbus, and Pipistrel appearing across the recent run. The show is also comfortable moving across commercial aviation, defense aircraft, spaceflight, and advanced air mobility without smoothing away the differences between them. It can be plainspoken. It can be dryly funny. It is usually more interested in how something works than in how dramatic the headline sounds. That matters in the 737 MAX discussions, where the conversation turns toward MCAS criticality, angle-of-attack inputs, redundancy, simulator evidence, quality issues, and the consequences of prosecution for people involved in aircraft design. The Tom Warner episode shows the same instinct from another angle. There, lightning research, piloting, B-1 bombers, hail, flash blindness, electric fields, and thunderstorm data become part of one safety picture. STRUCK also tracks the business and policy layer around aircraft: Boeing CEO pay, Russia and leased aircraft, sanctions, FAA oversight, airline orders, electric and hydrogen credits, and certification races. The result is a show for people who want aviation explained through design, risk, regulation, and hard operating realities. It does not treat future aircraft as magic. It asks what has to be proven before they fly around people.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants aerospace news connected to aircraft systems, certification, safety tradeoffs, and the business decisions around flight technology.
What sets it apart: STRUCK stands out by turning aviation headlines into engineering sequences, especially around lightning protection, EVTOL development, Boeing safety questions, and regulatory oversight.
The Struck Podcast dives into aerospace engineering and the safety side of the aviation industry. In this show, you’ll learn about new technology in aerospace engineering and the businesses that are driving innovation in the skies. We regularly discuss new EVTOL designs and electric tech advances. FAA designated engineering representative (DER) and lightning protection expert, Allen Hall, gives a deeper look into the intricate systems that keep aircraft safe not only from lightning but from the growing complexity of aircraft design. You’ll learn about advances in electric aircraft, avionics, lightning protection, engines, FAA regulations and much more.
One angle-of-attack sensor can send you down a whole Boeing design rabbit hole.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A measured aviation episode about crash uncertainty, simulator disputes, and aerospace's next direction.
STRUCK begins with the China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737-800 crash and keeps its first read measured. The hosts stay with what can be weighed: transponder data, a disputed image that may suggest fire or a flap, and the plain limit that sensors cannot catch every possible…
A wide-ranging aviation business discussion ties Boeing executive pay to Russia's leased-plane dispute and the race to certification.
Boeing executive pay becomes the entry point for a broader look at how aviation leadership gets valued. Dan Blewett and Alan Hall consider the short earning window a chief executive may have, the past performance that can justify the role, and the way that argument echoes…
A Boeing documentary is measured against the engineering logic it leaves out.
This single-episode review finds its footing in the hosts' pushback on a Boeing documentary on Netflix. Rather than staying with the film's broad indictment, Dan Blewett and Alan Hall zero in on how MCAS was classified and why that mattered for safeguards.
A focused aviation-safety conversation on lightning protection, Boeing oversight, and the process behind aircraft approval.
Aviation safety is treated here as a matter of process, not just hardware. The conversation connects lightning protection, aircraft approval, helicopter news, and Boeing oversight, with Alan Hall explaining why the F-35's nitrogen inerting system matters when a fuel tank is…
A vivid look at how lightning, hail, and mixed-phase storms turn flight into a research problem.
Thunderstorms come through here as physical engineering problems, not just dramatic weather. Tom Warner describes rough air, strike marks found after landing, and the mixed-phase conditions around minus 10 degrees Celsius that can make flight hazardous.
Manufacturing change, from tools to events.
STEM careers, told through human turning points.
Mining engineering talk with field memory.
A China Eastern Boeing 737-800 carrying 132 people dropped from cruise altitude into the ground, and Dan Blewett and Alan Hall spend time on what the transponder data and CCTV footage do and do not show.
STRUCK EP95 spends its first third on Boeing CEO pay, with Dan Blewett and Alan Hall arguing over whether a $10 million package should follow a bad year at Boeing.
Dan Blewett and Alan Hall open with the Bell Nexus and argue that eVTOLs look smaller in photos than they do beside a person at the Smithsonian.
Joby's autonomous prototype crash in Northern California, the F-35's lightning-protection fixes, and the South China Sea crash-video charges drive this Struck episode.
An interview with lightning researcher Tom Warner about his career, high-speed photography techniques, and flying through thunderstorms in a T-28 aircraft.
This episode covers aviation news including an airline scam, Airbus's up-next wing project, Rolls-Royce B-52 contract, a Russian plane crash, and EVTOL developments.
This episode covers recent aerospace news including Atlas V rocket issues, Airbus deliveries, FAA approval of a heads-up display, and electric aircraft orders.
This episode covers Air France's A220 delivery, FAA unruly passenger regulations, Richard Branson's spaceflight, autonomous flight prospects, and EVTOL industry news.