Accidents/NTSB

A commercial balloon pilot’s “pattern of poor decision-making” led to his balloon striking power lines and then crashing to the ground in Texas in July 2016, killing all 16 on board, the NTSB concluded in its final report, issued on Tuesday. It was the deadliest balloon crash in U.S. history. Contributing to the accident were […]

The NTSB issued a Safety Alert (PDF) on Wednesday aimed at pilots who wear helmets while flying that have a cord attached to the aircraft’s internal communication system. Those cords may not easily detach in the case of an emergency, the safety board has found. The board cited two accidents, both involving helicopters, when the […]

Danish officials have found parts from an Air France A380 engine that fell on the Greenland icecap on Sept. 30 following an uncontained failure. Investigators used information from the plane’s flight data recorder to narrow down the search area and a helicopter was sent to look for remnants of the main fan and front cowling, […]

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 […]

There were no serious injuries in the crash of a 1964 C-model Mooney in Middlesex, Virginia, on Saturday that was absorbed by a luckily vacant house. The owner lives elsewhere and there was no one living there. The aircraft, registered in Pensacola, had two adults and a teen aboard when it left Hummel Field near […]

The NTSB is investigating the collision between a civilian drone and an Army UH-60 helicopter that took place in New York on Sept. 21, the board said on Thursday. “TheNTSBis investigating the incident because the drone was a civilian aircraft,” the board said in a news release. The Army also is conducting its own investigation. […]

After more than three years of searching and $160 million spent on the effort, the Australian government has ended the active search for Malaysian Flight 370, declaring the outcome “unacceptable.” MH370 disappeared on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014. It dropped out of radar and radio contact while transitioning into […]

I’ve noticed there is a bias, sometimes spoken aloud, that a pilot who made some sort of a mistake and had an accident was either not terribly bright, lacked basic skills or just plain didn’t have the magical “right stuff.” As an instrument instructor, I’ve certainly seen pilots with poor skills or who weren’t terribly […]

An unusual collision sent the pilot of a light aircraft to the hospital for observation and left the pilot and passenger of a helicopter unscathed at a private strip near Clearwater, Florida, on Saturday. Zack Taylor, the owner of Clearwater Air Park, told local media the Piper Arrow was landing and hit a hovering Robinson […]

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 […]