Features

The year was 1994. At Oshkosh, a small kit airplane company whisked the wrapper off a four-place, fixed-gear composite airplane called the Cirrus SR20. Weeks of tantalizing promotion promised that the airplane, hidden in the shadows of “Hangar X,” would be nothing less than the future of aviation. A quarter century later, it’s fair to […]

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 […]

Borescopes Are So…Intrusive Years ago I was performing an annual inspection for a friend of mine. As was our routine, the inspection was owner-assisted. That day I was looking over the busy bits forward of the firewall, as he was doing some kind of open-up in the cabin. Suddenly, from inside the airplane, he exploded […]

Sept. 5, 2019. Hurricane Dorian is pounding the North Carolina shoreline. We are CAVU in Ohio headed for New England and hoping to slide across the top of the weather, which is an arc of clouds 350 miles to the southeast of us, clearly rising above the horizon. We have been getting handed from one […]

With much talk about modern avionics in recent years, from glass cockpits to ADS-B, one fact remains unchanged: most aircraft have vacuum systems and gyroscopic instruments that sometimes fail. Although, there are pilots flying today’s skies that have never seen a gyroscopic instrument or have had to execute an NDB approach—with such instruments covered—there are […]

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 […]

Bahamas Relief Flights I respect the position and knowledge of AVweb and enjoy reading your articles. However, as the second aircraft to put wheels down at Marsh Harbor on Thursday – I disagree with a majority of your coverage of this issue. Having extensive prior knowledge of these islands prior to the storm I was […]

Cruising over the upper Midwest we heard this exchange: Aircraft: “Indy Cen … (SCREECH) … vember 12(SQUEAL) … checking in at … (HOWL)” Indy Center: “N123 Congratulations! You win the award for the worst … radio … ever!” Angelo Iannuzzo Lowell, MA

In my view, there are four basic categories of aviation weather threats: low clouds and reduced visibility; turbulence and low-level wind shear; airframe ice; and thunderstorms (which may contain the three other hazards in one nasty package). When evaluating weather for a planned flight, I look at observations and forecasts with each of these specific […]

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 […]