Features

I was flying home during the COVID‑19 pandemic, when the following took place: Spirit 936: “Atlantic City Approach, Spirit 936, 5000.” Atlantic City Approach: “Spirit 936, descend and maintain 3000, direct PRSTY. And if you don’t mind me asking, what’s your passenger count today?” Spirit 936: “We only have 2 passengers on board.” Me: “Only […]

AVweb’s General Aviation Accident Bulletin is taken from the pages of our sister publication, Aviation Safety magazine. All the reports listed here are preliminary and include only initial factual findings about crashes. You can learn more about the final probable cause on the NTSB’s website at www.ntsb.gov. Final reports appear about a year after the […]

AI Beats Human In Mock Dogfights Some interesting things about this one. 1. the pilot didn’t have much time in a simulator of this type, 2. the simulation didn’t have to simulate the full physics of a gunshot, it just had to get the opposing aircraft in a cone in front of its aircraft and […]

There are events in your life where you will always remember the time, place and what you were doing when they happened: September 11, 2001; your first solo; and, for me, a phone call and proposal from an air-racing legend. It was 2:30 in the afternoon and I was putting gas in my car in […]

This article originally appeared in KITPLANES. What do you get when you take an LSA bush plane and put an Aero Sport Power IO-375 on the nose? You get a machine that is ready to take on the world—a world of short strips, sandbars, and mountain meadows. Zenith Aircraft started with a STOL CH 750 […]

Upon checking into a Kansas City Center sector, I caught the following conversation already in progress: Kansas City Center: “Uh Three Forty-five, what type of cargo are you carrying?” 345: “We’re carrying a college men’s basketball team.” Center: “Ah, roger. I was just wondering about your callsign.” 345: “We don’t like it better than anyone […]

AVweb’s General Aviation Accident Bulletin is taken from the pages of our sister publication, Aviation Safety magazine. All the reports listed here are preliminary and include only initial factual findings about crashes. You can learn more about the final probable cause on the NTSB’s website at www.ntsb.gov. Final reports appear about a year after the […]

It’s Time To Sunset The ELT Requirement […]Nobody is addressing the primary advantage of an ELT – *Automatic* notification of a crash. PLBs, ADS-B, cell-phone, etc., all require some level of manual activation. None of them will automatically notify anyone that a crash has occurred. It’s somewhat like thinking “I’ll buckle my seat-belt *just* before […]

Schedules, climate, and other factors can limit our ability to maintain instrument currency in actual instrument conditions. The FAA allows us to maintain currency by using flight simulators and training deices without an instructor, but not all of us have access to an acceptable device. Besides, it is much more fun to fly an airplane […]

The ego is a marvelous and durable thing. Affix pilot to the word, however, and it morphs into something larger and potentially indestructible, thus many a builder has attempted first flight of a new airplane rather than letting a pilot expert in the type wring it out first. Hey, to be fair, it usually works […]