Features

While pilots and air traffic controllers work with each other daily, perhaps we don’t often think about the nitty-gritty details and problem-solving taking place on the other side. When everything appears to be running smoothly, there’s nothing to worry about, right? If I’m your controller for the moment and tell you, “Proceed direct [FIX],” it’s […]

I work at a TRACON with a busy satellite airport nearby. Over the years it’s gotten rather tedious to get asked for higher so often. Unfortunately, sometimes you have to remain low after departing that airport due to the surrounding flow of traffic. A specific King Air I got to recognize would check in: “Departure, […]

A deterrent for using supplemental oxygen—especially in tight cabins—is having to deal with the hardware, including the bottle and oxygen lines strung every which way. Aithre, which has been cranking out decent portable solutions, has developed a hard-mounted system called the AVI C. I took a look at the system at AirVenture 2022 where it was […]

One of the truisms in aviation is that there’s weather no airplane should tackle. The addendum is that if you want to go shoot approaches in your Cessna 150 through relatively benign IMC, there’s probably not that much that can go wrong. But even a 747 likely won’t tolerate extreme icing. And we all (should) […]

FAA Concerned Lightning Could Cause 777 Explosions It is quite a challenge to try and put this sort of problem in proper perspective for the “Monday Morning cockpit crowd” without sounding callous. Actually, airline maintenance personnel perform dozens of tasks on a repetitive basis, similar to tasks associated with this fastener, to “inspect and correct” […]

Congrats on your new instrument rating! You’ve spent a lot of time, money and energy accomplishing something only a very small portion of the overall population ever will. With your well-earned privilege comes great responsibility and flexibility in your flying, and possibly a rung in the ladder to some additional certificates. The thing is, though—perhaps […]

Tooling along from Florida to Massachusetts one sunny afternoon, apparently ATC had some sort of computer hiccup. Atlanta Center: “American 123, Atlanta Center; our system is having some problems, can you confirm your route?” American 123: “ABC VOR, XYZ intersection, so-and-so arrival.” Atlanta Center: “Thanks.” Unidentified Voice: “A Delta pilot would’ve responded, ‘Destination direct.’” Multiple […]

With all the kits available, why did Art Zemon choose a 50-year-old design? It’s a question he gets often, usually followed by “Are you nuts?” The BD-4 “is not pretty,” said the 59-year-old computer engineer based at the St. Charles County Airport west of St. Louis, Missouri. “It looks like the box the airplane came […]

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 […]

Yeah, Fear Of Crashes Keeps More People Out Of Aviation Than We Admit It is an interesting conundrum that people get all upset when one of those “dangerous” little airplanes crashes, but simply shrug when there were two or three fatal car accidents on the same day. Safety is a perceptual thing. Flying has always […]