Accidents/NTSB

I get a certain perverse pleasure out of fishing for stupidity and not to make light of my fellow aviators’ misfortunes, the Grand Banks of stupidity is found in the NTSB accident database. Here, you will find a vast and ever varied trove of trained, government-certified airmen enlisting the aid of perfectly serviceable airplanes to […]

The FAA has some serious explaining to do following a tragic accident in Long Island last weekend that killed one person and injured another. As we reported, a Bonanza pilot had engine trouble and the controller vectored him toward a runway at the former Grumman Bethpage airport. Unfortunately, that airport has been closed for some […]

Earlier this month, the NTSB released findings on trends in general aviation accidents. The GA fatal rate, after an all time low of 1.12/100,000 hours in 2013 reversed its trend to 1.4. That’s the highest since 1998. The overall accident rate spiked slightly from 6.26 in 2013 to 6.74 in 2014. But do these numbers […]

In tightly knit pilot communities, an accident often has profound effects on the group because most people in it know the accident pilot. That was definitely the case with the Larry Glazer TBM accident in 2014, in which the pilot became unresponsive, apparently due to hypoxia, and overflew his destination, crashing at sea near Jamaica. […]

What of Icon? One of the airplanes we hoped to cover here at AirVenture was the new Icon A5, an amphibious LSA that the company says has the potential to reset the entire market. Well, maybe. It’s sure a good-looking airplane. Icon promised us a trial flight then, without explanation, abruptly withdrew the invitation. This […]

In the wake of last week’s troubling indications that a trained First Officer intentionally crashed an Airbus A320 in the French Alps, I couldn’t help but wonder if passengers boarding airliners are suddenly giving the crews the fisheye. Truthfully, I can’t really say I wouldn’t, but I’m no more worried about a repeat of Germanwings […]

Lacking a better descriptor, I’ll call today’s blog an examination of confirmation bias. We all know this as the tendency to seek or select only that information which tends to confirm our own opinions and prejudices. I have it. You have it. We all have it, to some degree. A reader wrote yesterday to ask […]

Over the next week or 10 days, I’ll be writing a few blogs on aviation risk assessment—how people judge it and how they mitigate it. While I’m getting started on that, a reader wrote to challenge my assessment of the J-3 Cub’s safety and crashworthiness. I touched on this in the Aviation Consumer article that […]

Certainly the disappearance of Malaysian Flight 370 can be classified as the greatest mystery since Amelia Earhart. But after numerous conversations with airline colleagues, aviation friends, neighbors, workout buddies and bartenders, I’ve uncovered another mystery. Despite scientific evidence that proves otherwise, many of these educated people are emphatic in their belief that a 650,000-pound airplane […]