Features

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 […]

Low-Viz Takeoffs Just because you can doesn’t mean you should, though anyone suggesting a zero-zero makes it easy to determine whose aviation judgement I would trust my loved ones with. The crews wearing the big boy pants have thoroughly engineered/tested avionics/installations, repetitively trained/evaluated proficient multi-pilot crews, redundant equipment, rigorous SOPs and supporting field infrastructure. Even […]

For those with the skill and budget, a Cessna 425 Conquest I may still be one of the least expensive ways to get into the world of turboprop twins. Its direct competitors might be the Piper Cheyenne I, a Beech King Air 90 and even some turboprop singles. And for those with a goal of eventually […]

Airplanes are designed for particular missions. Some are simple ultralights designed to lift you off the ground for a few minutes in the golden hour of evening light. Some are fast performance cruisers intended to whisk you and your baggage across the country in short periods of time. Others are designed to ring out your […]

One day I landed at Snohomish County Airport (Paine Field), Washington, after doing some practice approaches in nice actual benign IMC. After I had landed, tower kept me on their frequency as I taxied to the hangar. Just before shutting down, they asked: “N30322, when did you break out?” To which I replied, “I don’t […]

Randall Funston of Van Bortel Aircraft Inc. likes to tell the story of how the company got its start. It’s one of those scrappy, bootstrap tales that seems to abound in aviation: “Howard Van Bortel started the world’s largest Cessna dealership in 1985 on a card table in his sister’s living room with $1,000 in […]

On December 24, 2017, a Cessna 340 crashed at Bartow, Fla., during an attempted predawn IMC departure. All five aboard the airplane died. At the time this article was written, it was not yet known what factors, if any, beside the weather may have contributed to this Christmas Eve tragedy. Regardless, the circumstances should remind […]

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 […]

Last 747 Is Off The Line End of an era indeed. Not just for one airframe but also as an exemplar of a company that used to epitomize engineering excellence and innovation. David G. I watched one taking off at JFK one evening while sitting in my Hawker on the taxiway. My comment to the […]

Often, the word “front” raises anxiety and apprehension in aviation meteorology. It carries the possibility of showers and thunderstorms, signals a change in the weather regime, and means the distinct possibility of a busted forecast. Thankfully there’s nothing to fear. Fronts are now well understood—computer models have become excellent at handling the underlying air masses that […]