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 […]

Accident Probe: Course Reversal In IMC Turning around is ok if you have trained for it. I got vertigo in the left seat of a B-52 doing a descending right turn between layers of sloping clouds. I had been trained to believe the instruments and I locked onto the HSI and told my copilot to […]

Being both a pilot and air traffic controller, I enjoy learning the dos and don’ts from both sides of the mic. We’re all human and everybody makes mistakes—yes, even controllers as I’ve observed from the pilot seat. But, I’m hoping you’ll ride along with me as I share some observations from the tower cab about […]

The Citabria is a proven design, based on the Champion 7-series airframe. The more rugged 8 series is the more fully aerobatic Decathlon. Pre-1990s Citabrias have wooden wing spars, and with that comes the possibility of strut corrosion. The aerobatic 7GCBC model, with slightly longer wings and flaps, is arguably the most popular with first-time […]

I was crossing the Sierras on my way to Las Vegas at 15,000 feet in my DA40 NG, which has a maximum operating altitude of 16,400 feet, when Oakland Center came on and told me to climb to 17,000 feet. I responded “unable.” After a significant pause, the controller came back and said, “I don’t […]

We’ve long maintained that one of the best ways for a pilot to enhance his or her aviation risk management is to earn and use the instrument rating. This is especially true if the pilot in question has plans to use their pilot certificate for transportation on anything resembling a schedule. That’s because the skills, […]

FAA Letter Hits, Again, At Illegal Compensation For Carrying Passengers As demonstrated by yet ANOTHER FAA “warning” about “Illegal Charter Operations”–this is going to become a larger and larger issue for Private and Business pilots. It’s too bad–it’s bad for the industry in multiple ways. I can’t blame NATA for trying to protect their “slice […]

It was well after dark when we arrived over the unfamiliar rural airport. We were descending toward that green and white airport beacon, and I thought I could see the headlights of my brother-in-law’s crew-cab pickup truck in the parking lot. “Watch this,” I said to my daughter, and I clicked the push-to-talk switch seven […]

One morning at KAPA (used to be Arapahoe County Airport, now Centennial Airport in south metro Denver, Colorado) I decided to get current in my Super Decathlon. It was a rare morning with no wind and no other aircraft in the pattern of one of the nation’s busier GA airports. After a few close‑in patterns, […]

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 […]