Search Results for: vfr

I’ve been an avionics tech long enough to remember when the extent of new avionics upgrades included a couple of flip-flop Navcomm radios and an audio panel. Even back then, some owners stumbled with otherwise simple switchology. Worse case was a missed radio call. Things have changed. Today’s avionics upgrades usually involve tightly integrated glass […]

The maneuver by an Airbus 319 crew over Michigan on Monday, briefly diving the jet in response to a TCAS warning, may seem routine to aviators, but it’s been getting a lot of coverage in the mainstream press, citing terrified passengers and jostled flight attendants. “Screaming passengers feared the plane was going to crash,” says […]

Especially in military operations, it’s impossible to eliminate risk, but it can be minimized. Many of their risk-management techniques can apply to your flying. No matter what we do in an aircraft, we cannot eliminate risk entirely. Instead, we can manage that risk and take positive steps to mitigate or reduce it; in rare cases, […]

Now that the iPad and tablet-type computers have become all but standard equipment in the cockpit, so are reports of their failures trickling in. I got a note from a former airplane partner last week reporting that a primary app on his tablet failed and wouldn’t restart, killing access to charts and approach plates. How […]

Operational guidelines followed by professionals would not have allowed a circling approach into the weather, terrain and lighting conditions this pilot attempted. Flying under Part 91 gives us an incredible amount of aviation freedom. Yet, it is this relative freedom from heavy regulation which is largely responsible for General Aviation’s safety record, a safety record […]

Each week, we run a sampling of the letters received to our editorial inbox here in AVmail. One letter that’s particularly relevant, informative, or otherwise compelling will headline this section as our “Letter of the Week,” and we’ll send the author an official AVweb baseball cap as a “thank you” for interacting with us (and […]

In a scathingly critical report (PDF) of Australian safety investigators and regulators, the Australian Senate last week found that an investigation into the 2009 ditching of a medical evacuation flight off Norfolk Island was so incompetently handled that it could be referred to authorities for criminal prosecution. The Senate investigation, which began last September, found […]

Properly managing risk is essential to successfully pursuing life’s more exciting adventures. Activities such as scuba diving, downhill skiing, motorcycling, mountaineering and, of course, flying, all entail elements of risk which we must consider and manage if the thrills we seek are to be experienced more than once. But risk management often is poorly understood: […]

Original, Exclusive Videos from AVweb |Reader-Submitted & Viral Videos For years, we’ve been wondering when someone would get around to producing data-driven charts — that is, a portable or a panel mount that renders charts not from an enhanced PDF but from a database of coordinates it uses to draw the basic map graphics. Now […]

Handling in-flight electrical failures requires knowing the affected systems and where good weather is. Radio silence: that’s what most pilots say got their attention and made them realize they had encountered an in-flight electrical failure. Too bad, because by the time the radios no longer worked, odds are that your electrical system had sucked all […]