Features

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 […]

I heard the following exchange on a beautiful spring day when COVID had grounded almost everyone. Cherokee 123: “Approach, we are headed down to Okeechobee today and would like to come through the Class Bravo, and I guess we would like flight following, too … (long pause) … oh, and we would like to make […]

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 […]

Buying The Old Ones: Homework Mandatory Absolutely agree–old airplanes DO fly differently than produced today. Robert Gilruth from NACA was the author of setting standards of how airplanes should handle–and that didn’t happen until 1937. I’ve flown more than 330 unique types of airplanes (depending on how you count them)–including many antiques–and later airplanes that […]

Staggerwing. Caught you. It only took one word. You started dreaming. It’s okay, we did too. In our mind’s eye we saw that sleek work of art smoke over us at 200 MPH, 450-HP Pratt rumbling as it dwindled away toward the horizon. Unless one’s blood is the consistency of water, at some time every […]