Accidents/NTSB

Indonesian authorities reported Tuesday that a warship had recovered several bodies in the Java Sea confirmed to have been victims of AirAsia Flight 8501, which vanished on a flight from Surbaya to Singapore on Sunday. Indonesia’s Strait Times said late Tuesday local time that the corvette Bung Tomo reported that more bodies are expected to […]

Two men were killed Tuesday afternoon when the light helicopter they were flying in crashed into the roof of a building in North Salt Lake, Utah, authorities reported on Tuesday afternoon. Debris from the crash — the helo’s tail rotor — was found up to a half mile away, suggesting the aircraft may have broken […]

The NTSB said Wednesday a “punitive culture and inadequate safety management” along with poor weather caused the crash of an Alaska Department of Public Safety helicopter on March 30, 2013. The single-engine Eurocopter crashed in wooded and snow-covered terrain east of Talkeetna, killing the pilot, another state trooper and the snowmobiler they had just rescued.The […]

Losing people in a flight program is gut-wrenchingly hard and today I feel for all of the folks at Scaled Composites. None of them set out to lose a friend and injure another when they prepared to launch SpaceShipTwo last Friday. Their goal was the same as every person or team that has ever taken […]

The Wall Street Journal is reporting (subscription only) that structural failure, rather than an engine explosion, is the initial focus of the NTSB investigation into the loss of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo on Friday. It is quoting unnamed sources as saying the preliminary video and data analysis is turning the focus to an aerodynamic breakup, although […]

Friday’s loss of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo was as inevitable was it was tragic. If anyone believes-as I think some do-that attaching “tourism” to space flight somehow erases the risk of flight beyond the atmosphere, this accident should disabuse them of that notion. But I wonder if it will. Promoting space tourism has gotten quite beyond […]

One test pilot has died and another has been seriously injured in the crash of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo during a test flight from Mojave Air and Space Port, California. The company said that the spacecraft suffered an anomaly that resulted in loss of the vehicle. Parachutes were reportedly sighted in the area. One witness said […]

A Beechcraft B200 King Air crashed through the roof of one of the FlightSafety International buildings on Wichita’s Mid-Continent Airport this morning. Reports indicate that the airplane lost an engine on takeoff and the pilot said he was going to return and land. The lone occupant of the aircraft was pilot Mark Goldstein, a contract […]

A Hawker Hunter owned by Airborne Tactical Advantage Company (ATAC), a civilian tactical airborne training organization, crashed Wednesday on approach to Naval Base Ventura County, near Point Mugu, California. The pilot was declared dead at the scene. No one on the ground was injured. An investigation into the cause is underway. ATAC’s website says it […]

Thursday’s tragic mid-air between a Cirrus SR22 and an R44 helicopter illuminated a watershed of sorts. With November near upon us, the accident marked the largest number of ballistic parachute deployments for Cirrus aircraft in a calendar year, but also the lowest rolling 12-month average of fatal accidents in the models’ history. If the two […]