Features

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 […]

During routine inspections, good technicians dig deep into the airframe looking for structural cracks. And if you’re doing even a causal preflight walkaround it’s not uncommon to find cracks around cowlings, windows and fairings. None of them should be ignored. Surface cracking doesn’t usually mean a cowling or control surface will come apart, but it’s […]

I was flying into Dulles a couple of years ago with my single-engine Comanche. Traffic was landing to the north and I touched down and exited in the first third of the 12,000-foot runway. I contacted Ground and was asked where I was parking. N5109P: “Jet Aviation at Zulu 2.” Dulles Ground: “N5109P turn left […]

The United States. “What a country!” as comedian Yakov Smirnoff once said. It’s equipped with first-class observation systems, sophisticated forecast models, and a lively research community. It has what is undoubtedly the most extensive weather infrastructure of any country in the world, and this is in part due to North America’s notoriously temperamental weather. It’s […]

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 […]