Features

Overheard just after landing at Austin, Texas: Cessna 0DS: “Austin Tower, Cessna Five Seven Zero Delta Sierra, ready for departure.” No response for a short time. Tower: “Was that American Twelve Sixty‑one calling?” Cessna 0DS: “I wish. No, it was Cessna Five Seven Zero Delta Sierra.” Unidentified: “Be careful what you wish for.” Scott McCartney […]

I like to fly at night. The air generally is smoother, there’s less traffic, the ATC frequencies are not as busy and ground illumination, the moon and the stars can compete in one of the best light shows you’ll ever see. Of course, humans were never meant to fly in the first place, and we […]

Boeing 737 MAX Do we (meaning Boeing) know how often the MCAS was actually activated in airline service? It is my understanding that Boeing intended for MCAS activation to be exceedingly rare and “Invisible” to the PIC. I assume it is possible to determine how many times MCAS was activated world-wide and under what circumstances. […]

It’s aviation’s Everest: the highest rating, the toughest to obtain and necessary to have to fly in the Part 121 airline world, and even in some portions of the Part 135 air taxi world. In reality, if you want to fly for a living, the chances are almost unity that you’ll need to hold an […]

Recently, I was giving an IPC to a friend in his J model Mooney. We decided to fly the Boca Raton (KBCT) VOR‑A approach using GPS for the final approach segment (FAS). The approach starts at the Palm Beach (PBI) VORTAC and the FAS is 17.7 NM long. We were north and outside of the […]

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 […]

Are Pilot Skills Worse Than Ever? A lot of places where pilot skills are down are places where we won’t expect to see accident rates rise until much later. These are big flight schools pumping out new pilots for airlines to put in the right-hand seat. These pilots are not in command of aircraft themselves […]

During training and checkrides, pilots are expected to be able to use all the features of a glass panel including the autopilot. In this article we’ll address some of the intricacies of addressing that challenge. This is especially relevant to instrument rated pilots who have mainly flown round gauge airplanes without autopilots and flight directors. […]

It’s not enough to present young people with opportunities, they have to be sold on their benefits according to a young pilot who has made it his mission to do just that. Barrington Irving, who became the youngest person to circumnavigate the world solo at the age of 23, told an audience at NBAA-BACE that […]

Late in the afternoon of July 4, I was flying with my wife from Nebraska to Philadelphia International Airport in our Piper Cherokee. Stationary storms around the airport were causing major departure delays. As we landed on Runway 35 we could see planes lined up all along Taxiway K—nearly to the intersection with Runway 35. […]