Accidents/NTSB

Commercial drones expected to fly U.S. skies in coming years, delivering pizza or monitoring power lines, would be dangerously vulnerable to hackers without a variety of potentially costly countermeasures to their GPS navigation systems, results of a federal study indicate. According to an exclusive report in the Christian Science Monitor, a serious, but not well […]

The National Transportation Safety Board Wednesday denied a petitionfor reconsideration of its findings in the investigation of the July 17, 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800. The aircraft exploded while on climbout from JFK, taking the lives of the 230 passengers and crew. The four-year investigation by the NTSB was one of the largest transportation […]

A United Airliners 737 en route from Chicago to Los Angeles landed in Wichita Sunday night after an emergency evacuation slide inadvertently inflated inside the cabin. The aircraft was in cruise flight at FL 380 when the incident occurred, according to Reuters. The aircraft, a 737-700, was carrying 96 passengers plus five crew members. “The […]

President Obama has nominated Christopher Hart to be the next chair of the National Transportation Safety Board. He has been vice chair since October 2013 and has been a member of the NTSB since October 2009, along with other stints from 2009 through 2013 and 1990 through 1993. Hart faces confirmation by the Senate to […]

Letter of the Week:USA Today‘s Strategy Only a personal injury lawyer would write a Lettre de Cachet like the black adventure story published in USA Today. My sympathies for their reduced ad revenues and declining circulation. But holding public executions and sensational smear campaigns has never worked for any publication. Even the networks hesitate to […]

More than 400 large U.S. military drones have crashed in major accidents around the world since 2001, a record of calamity that exposes the potential dangers of throwing open American skies to drone traffic, according to a yearlong Washington Post investigation. Since the outbreak of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, military drones have malfunctioned […]

Three men are reportedto have been killed in the crash of an IAI Westwind II on the northwest side of the Huntsville, Ala., Airport Wednesday afternoon. The airplane appears to have been on a training flight, with flight instructor Robin Gary Smith of Yukon, Okla., and operator of the training company Jet Contrails, reportedly among […]

While reading over USA Todays exhaustive-and exhausting-indictment of general aviation, I was struck by the inescapable feeling that Id been given the Disney tour of every plaintiffs file room for the past 40 years, without benefit of hearing what cross examination revealed in the court cases this reporting obviously leaned so heavily upon. So much […]

An extensive report on general aviation safety in USA Today this week doesn’t convey the whole story, says GAMA President Pete Bunce. He took a break from his work in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday to talk with AVweb’s Mary Grady about ongoing efforts to build safer airplanes. Duration: 8:47 File Size: 8.0 MB download here

Today, the NTSB released its preliminary accident reporton the May 31, 2014, fatal accident of a Gulfstream G-IV at Hanscom Field, Bedford, Mass.-it stated that although the mechanical control lock was in the off position, the Fight Data Recorder (FDR) indicated the elevator position throughout the event was consistent with the control lock being engaged. […]