Accidents/NTSB

An internal defect caused an uncontained engine failure, leading to a fire, during the takeoff roll of a Boeing 767 in October 2016, the NTSB said in its probable-cause hearing on Tuesday. The subsurface defect led to cracking in a turbine disk. The cracks were undetectable using current inspection methods, the investigators found. “Even though […]

Our Stearman, otherwise known as the Queen, has been around awhile. An open-cockpit biplane built in 1941, there’s quite a bit of anachronistic hardware on her that I find every once in a while. The latest bits that required urgent replacement were all the old pre-World War II fuel line fittings. Someone in the past […]

Bell Helicopter responded this week to the NTSB’s recent report on the crash of a Bell 525 during a test flight in 2016. “In the time since the accident, a small team of Bell flight technology engineers, pilots and flight-test specialists have worked with the NTSB through the course of the investigation,” company spokesperson Blakeley […]

In the world of economics, there’s a concept called tragedy of the commons or sometimes freedom of the commons. The underlying principle is that in an economy of shared resources, individual members act against the good of all by consuming more than their share or acting to spoil the resource. The classic example is a […]

AVweb’s General Aviation Accident Bulletin is taken from the pages of our sister publication, Aviation Safety magazine and is published twice a month. All the reports listed here are preliminary and include only initial factual findings about crashes. You can learn more about the final probable cause in the NTSB’s web site at www.ntsb.gov. Final […]

Former Major League pitcher Roy Halladay had three drugs in his system when his Icon A5 crashed off the coast of Florida in November. The retired ballplayer had trace amounts of morphine and amphetamine along with an intoxicating level of the sedative zolpidem, commonly known as Ambien, in his bloodstream according to an autopsy report […]

The NTSB issued its final report on Tuesday following its investigation of the Bell 525 crash in July 2016 that killed two pilots during a test flight in Texas. The board cited a “severe vibration” of the helicopter, “which was not predicted during development,” as the probable cause of the crash. The vibration led to […]

“Why do you get so mad?” It was my wife, Val, asking the question in that incandescently irritating tone that only long-term spouses can summon because they absolutely already know the answer. We had been stuck in stop-and-go traffic on I-75 for seven hours (really 15 minutes) north of Tampa. The cause of it, when […]

The U.S. Coast Guard released an official statement announcing that it was ending its search for Dr. Bill Kinsinger of Oklahoma, who disappeared over the Gulf of Mexico in his Cirrus SR22T. The aircraft was last observed by radar approximately 200 miles northwest of Cancun, Mexico. Although no definitive determination can be made at this […]

Friends of a missing pilot have paid tribute to him by finishing the Pilots N Paws animal rescue flight that he was on last Wednesday. Dr. Bill Kinsinger was on his way from Oklahoma City to Austin in his Cirrus SR22 when the aircraft changed course and contact was lost by air traffic control. The […]