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 […]

Shark Says No Thanks To Pushing A Youth Record Having flown around the world myself (Mooney M20K, following Amelia Earhart’s route in 2017) I have received queries from several young people wanting to set “youngest” circumnavigation records. I detail the issues I had with weather, getting fuel, systems failures, and the like, which challenged my […]

Should it become necessary, you really need to know and understand ways to deal with the FAA. These days, it’s more likely you will first deal with the gentle Dr. Jekyll, but it can escalate quickly to the enforcer, Mr. Hyde, if the soft approach fails. Your interaction with the Feds will play a prominent […]

On the subject of favorite fixes, when I got my instrument rating of course I spent lots of time planning trips. One such theoretical trip was a return to Bowman Field (KLOU), where my wife and I had enjoyed a trip a couple years ago. When I pulled up the approaches I nearly fell out […]

If you have your sights set on a composite four-place piston, the Diamond DA40 Star is likely on the list of airplanes to consider. There is plenty to like, and DA40 owners rave about their airplanes’ performance and reliability. But the deal sealer could be the aircraft’s impressive safety record, thanks to a smart overall […]

Everyone knows that buying a used airplane involves a level of risk, and despite the requirements for record keeping and mandatory annual inspections any number of significant gremlins can hide within the airframe. The risk increases substantially with an aging composite structure. Face it, while aluminum aircraft still dominate the fleet, composite construction represents a […]

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 […]

Overcoming Multiple Checkride Failures At the end of my career as a DPE I retested and passed a woman who had endured exactly this kind of behavior on her first try for PP. That DPE was not removed, and I subsequently heard that his behavior toward female applicants is well known in the region. I […]

One thing all pilots feel at some point on any flight is a sense of pressure. On a good-day local flight, it could be something as simple and routine as wanting to make an “are-we-down-yet-smooth” landing to impress someone. At the other extreme might be a boss who absolutely, positively needs to be at a […]

Years ago, I had gotten pretty used to skirting VFR in my Grumman AA1-B around the western edges of New York’s Class B airspace as I headed north-south to-and-from my home in New Jersey. The busiest time on the radio was overflying Caldwell and Morristown Airports (KCDW and KMMU) because their airspace almost overlapped, and […]