Features

My brother, J.R., and I have made a number of flights to the Bahamas in one of our two airplanes. Once we had a crowd, so we took both airplanes. He was in his Cessna 182 and I was in my Cessna 206. On the return trip while crossing central Florida, near Orlando, on a […]

We’re Way Better Than We Used To Be “I also wonder if the age of the serious, hardcore scofflaw has all but passed.” Age….our pilot population is aging. The ranks are not getting re-populated with a proportional young age demographic. The aviation pioneers of the twenties and thirties were replaced with tens of thousands of […]

It was my Sunday morning to pick up the doughnuts on the way to the pilot’s lounge at the virtual airport, so I wanted to get there early. If it’s your doughnut day and you show up after the regulars are already ensconced in the ratty old recliners, swilling coffee and telling flying lies, you’re […]

Since the mid-1990s, the FAA has worked proactively with the aviation community to reduce fatal aviation accidents. This has worked spectacularly well with the airlines, which are much more tightly regulated than general aviation, and the safety record shows it. Until recently, however, these efforts haven’t trickled deep down to GA. That’s changing. Recent, similar […]

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 in the NTSB’s website at www.ntsb.gov. Final reports appear about a year after the accident, although some take longer. […]

Drone Hysteria V2.0 I thought the article was well written and informative, thank you. One sector of aviation that seems to be mostly overlooked when Discussing drones is the Helicopter Air Ambulance industry. As a Helicopter Air Ambulance pilot drones have become a big concern. Consider my daily scenario. We land/take off and fly between […]

I was flying south over a water route just off the East Coast nearing Washington, D.C., when a Baron called ATC and this was the exchange. Baron: “Washington Center, what were those aircraft that just went by me? It was a group of some kind of fighters.” Center: “Oh, those. Yes, that was a flight […]

Many of today’s workplaces seek to create a formalized “safety culture,” an environment where employees practice behaviors that minimize accidents, look out for their co-workers and where reporting unsafe conditions is encouraged, not subject to retaliation, and frequently rewarded. It can be a great goal, but it often creates an exaggerated sense of safety where […]

I recall an instructor, who before signing students off for the commercial checkride, would explain a few things he felt were critical when exercising commercial privileges. First, commercial pilots had to be smooth. After all, paying passengers would not be impressed if we could not fly the airplane well. Second, commercial pilots had to be […]

A few days ago, departing Minot North Dakota for Duluth in a Skylane, I asked ATC if the NOTAM for military training at Duluth had the airport closed, or whether it was open to GA traffic. He asked me to stand by for a minute, and then said, “It’s closed at the moment, but will […]