Features

Most of my mountain-flying experience comes from frequent trips across or parallel with the Appalachian range in the eastern U.S. I’ve flown my share of trips to Las Vegas and California, though, and at least since an episode over North Carolina in a 160-hp Skyhawk, I’ve always tried to plan for and avoid related turbulence. […]

Keep Up The Good Fight Great article, Tarrance. I flew 35 years for American/USAirways and 17 years with Navy Reserves. The controllers always helped me, if I explained to them what I needed. Once I was in a holding pattern with about 7 company planes ahead of me and was getting ready to divert due […]

The clock read a few minutes past noon when I pulled through my control tower’s entry gate. As always on my way into work, I took in the weather conditions, mentally prepping for the day ahead. A scattered cloud deck mottled the blue above. What drew my eye most, though, was a pocket of cumulus […]

Returning from Montgomery Field, California, to my home field of Boulder City, Nevada, l was north of Palm Springs when l overheard this exchange: Los Angeles Center: “Shooter One One, you have an RJ at your 12 o’clock, five miles and a 1000 feet below, opposite direction.” Shooter One One: “Looking for traffic.” Center: “RJ123 […]

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 […]

What To Do About UFOs? Change The Name After 47 years and 28,000 hours of flying, I’ve never had an encounter but I flew with two different airline pilots who had. One pilot was in a modern fighter during his encounter. He described to me in detail the performance and capabilities of the object, which […]

By the time you read this, my Debonair should have a freshly overhauled engine holding down its nose. The story of how all that came to be is best told with a few adult beverages, but the bottom line is I will soon have a new hole in my wallet and a zero-since-major-overhaul IO-520. This […]

I was flying an Angel Flight in Bradley International Airport’s airspace when a jump plane contacted the controller: Jump Plane: “Jump 1. One minute prior.” Bradley: “Are you Jump 1 or Jump 2?” Jump Plane: “Sorry, we’re in Jump 2.” Bradley: “I do jumps at your facility and understand the confusion.” Me: “I can never […]

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 […]

FAA Wants To Add Cardinals To Cessna Spar AD The proposed AD covers all Cardinals ever built. Though the 177 carry-through spar is similar to the 210 spar design, the 210 is a much heavier aircraft with greater potential for stress fatigue. As far as I have been able to glean from the NTSB fatal […]