Features

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 […]

Heard on So-Cal after a long period of silence: Cessna 234: “SOCAL Approach, Cessna Two Three Four.” SOCAL Approach: “Go ahead Two Three Four.” Cessna 234: “Just thought I’d check in to see if we’re still on the air. It’s been awfully quiet.” Approach: “Yeah, we’re still alive. Actually, it’s one of those relative things; […]

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 […]

Wind Check, Please Brings back many memories about winds, airplanes, and airports. I didn’t do much light airplane/civil flying. I was a military transport pilot and flew 747 freighters till retirement. One thing I noticed as the guys and gals grew younger in the right seat was a greater propensity to want more “wind checks” […]

The only time I’ve used Special VFR “in anger” goes back some 20 years, to a less-than-perfect day at a towered airport. I was set to depart the following day, on a mission to ferry a familiar airplane from one coast to the other. At the time, I hadn’t flown the airplane in a couple […]

Steve Henry is a man who likes to get his airplane off the ground in a hurry. A big hurry. We taxied out on the 5000-foot runway and lined up with a slight tailwind to avoid staring directly into the setting sun. He held the brakes and added a touch of throttle to lift the […]