Accidents/NTSB

A Chicago pilot and his passenger survived bailing out of their TBM Avenger on May 7 over northeastern Arizona. Ron Carlson and Kenny Franzese hit the silk near Fort Apache in Navajo County after an apparent engine failure in the freshly restored warbird. The two were ferrying the big single-engine torpedo bomber from Phoenix to […]

Several readers took exception to my comment in the Vashon Ranger review advising pilots to fly these airplanes beyond the 1320-pound limit. Said one message forwarded to me: “I just don’t think it’s right for someone who does so many reviews of so many aircraft to basically wink and nod and tell people it’s OK […]

Mechanic Shortage Regarding legislation that creates a program and funding to help with the shortage of aviation mechanics, I submit something that is a factor in the equation. Several weeks ago in the Phoenix area there were protests demanding the minimum wage go to $15 per hour. McDonalds was targeted by supporters of pending legislation. […]

While drones are increasingly used near crowds, the FAA still prohibits their flight directly over people. As a means of gaining FAA approval to fly drones over crowds, a company called Indemnis has developed a fast-deploying ballistic parachute that’s designed to resist entanglement if the aircraft is tumbling or spinning, thus making crowd flights safer. […]

The NTSB has opened the docket on Air Canada Flight 759, which mistakenly overflew a taxiway at San Francisco International Airport, barely missing four other airplanes. Information released by the NTSB included the video below, showing Flight 759 in the upper left, and more than 500 pages of reports, interviews, documents and data on the […]

UPDATED: An Air National Guard WC-130 Hercules crashed near the Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport (SAV) in Savannah, Georgia, on Wednesday. It has been confirmed that there were nine people onboard, all of whom were killed in the accident. A press release from the National Guard 165th Airlift Wing stated that the aircraft was on training […]

A new FAA Airworthiness Directive responding to the recent engine failure on a Southwest 737 will require initial and repetitive inspections of the fan blades in CFM56-7B engines, based on the accumulated fan-blade cycles, the FAA said on Tuesday. The AD (PDF), scheduled to be published on Wednesday, aims to “address the risk of fan-blade […]

In the ultimate act of jabbing a finger into the eye of fate, I’m writing today’s blog from seat 19D on a Southwest Airlines flight from Tampa to Denver. I tried to get the window seat directly abeam of the fan section of one of the engines, but passengers similarly casting caution to the wind […]

One of several safety-related issues that has emerged from the fatal engine failure on Southwest Flight 1380 is passenger response to safety briefings. Perhaps most striking in this instance is that in spite of the usual preflight run-down on the proper use of oxygen masks, video from the Southwest emergency shows several passengers with masks […]

According to a report from XinhuaNet, aerobatic pilot Elgin Wells was killed on Wednesday when his aircraft crashed during a practice flight before the Zhengzhou Air Show in China. The report states that the plane was 300 feet above the runway at Shangjie Airport when it “plummeted to the ground.” An investigation is underway to […]