Features

At one a.m. local time on November 11, 1995, an MD-83 was making a VOR instrument approach to RWY 15 at Bradley Field (KBDL) in Windsor Locks, Connecticut, when it struck trees on a ridge line about 2.65 miles from the runway threshold. Before we continue, let’s review a few altimeter terms. Altimeter Settings There […]

During my primary training, one of my mentors was fairly adamant about the threat of weather. If I had the skills, wisdom and experience, and the airplane was in good condition with sufficient fuel, he would point out, the only other big thing that could be a safety-of-flight problem was weather. The primary concerns he […]

April Fools’ Arrest I just read your article “AVweb Editor Arrested” with horror; I just really couldn’t believe what I was reading. I mean, it’s so outlandish that it reads like it should be a complete joke. I mean, this can’t be real. It just can’t. There’s no way that… … wait … What’s the […]

A few months ago, we heard this on Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Approach as we were flying through the area: Controller: “Cessna 123, traffic three o’clock, two miles.” Cessna 123: “Looking.” After a couple of minutes the controller came back with: “Cessna 123, disregard traffic advisory; that was a truck.” As I’m doubled over in laughter, the […]

As a flight service specialist, I was trained to understand National Weather Service charts, radars, satellite pictures and data. My job was to stay on top of how weather would affect flights primarily in my own geographic area, and in general throughout the country. I studied how terrain and upper air movement would affect weather […]

I was flying home late one night into my home base which is a non-towered airport near a Class C airport. Approach asked me to “call the field” when I had it in sight. It was the end of a long day and I didn’t respond with a cancellation as usual. Instead I replied, “Field […]

If there were some way I could make a series of trips back in time to change things, one of the stops on my itinerary would be to somehow infiltrate the small cadre of early pilots and airplane designers to convince them to use a word other than “stall” to describe what happens when a […]

AVweb’sGeneral Aviation Accident Bulletinis taken from the pages of our sister publication,Aviation Safetymagazine. 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 atwww.ntsb.gov. Final reports appear about a year after the accident, although some take longer. […]

In August my wife won three free tickets to an NFL pre‑season game. We live a few hours away from the stadium, so we decided to fly there. Any excuse to fly, right? I got to the airport earlier in the day (about a half‑hour drive from our house) to preflight, and my wife drove […]

Boeing 737 MAX Seeing the rapidity of Boeing’s claim to have a fix indicates that someone already knew of the potential of the problem but somewhere in the certification process got “voted off the island” when saying it needed to be fixed and tested. This is the classic development story of unclear requirements, time and […]