Accidents/NTSB

A newly released 322-page report on the Sept. 3, 2010, fatal crash of a UPS Boeing 747-44F noted “catastrophic uncontained fire” in an area that carried a “significant number” of lithium batteries as cargo, but did not resolve how the batteries ignited.Both pilots were killed in the crash. There were no other people on board. […]

The NTSB Thursday released the first in a series of videos highlighting circumstances and decision-making that have led to GA accidents with fatal outcomes and seeks to identify and reduce risks for GA pilots. Four more videos will follow. The videos, dubbed Video Safety Alerts, by the NTSB all run less than 5 minutes in […]

I do it. You do it. We all do it. As pilots, in the wake of an accident like Asiana 214 last Saturday in San Francisco, we crank up our piety and discipline and decline public comment until the investigators are done. But amongst ourselves, theres no such restraint and theres not much in the […]

A pilot aboard Asiana Flight 214 called for a go-around 1.5 seconds before the tail of the aircraft struck a seawall off the end of Runway 28L and San Francisco International Airport Saturday morning. At a news conference Sunday, NTSB Chairwoman Deborah Hersman said the cockpit voice recorder also recorded a crew member calling for […]

On Saturday afternoon, I was grinding away on the cross trainer at my local gym watching CNN try cover the Asiana crash at San Francisco. I say “try” because reporters with absolutely no meaningful information were attempting to fill air time. Nothing new about that. For the hour or so that I watched the coverage, […]

The CEO of Asiana Airlines has ruled out technical issues with the aircraft involved in Saturday’s landing accident in San Francisco. “For now, we acknowledge that there were no problems caused by the 777-200 plane or (its) engines,” Yoon Young-doo said at a news conference in Seoul Sunday. Yoon would not be drawn into blaming […]

A documentary filmmaker says the NTSB got it wrong (or was told to get it wrong) in its findings in the explosion and crash of a TWA Boeing 747 off Long Island in 1996. The NTSB is standing by its conclusion that a spark from wiring in a fuel tank downed the aircraft, not a […]

Conspiracy theories are a little like mold: It doesn’t take much to get them started and once established, they’re all but impossible to eradicate. The crash of TWA Flight 800 off Long Island in July 1996 has proven rich soil indeed for a perennial crop of nut cases, wild-eyed lunatics and foil-hat purveyors. The latest […]

Australia’s aviation accident investigation agency, the ATSB, Thursday released its final report on an uncontained engine failure that occurred November 4, 2010, on a Qantas Airbus A380 over Indonesia and severely damaged aircraft systems. Investigators concluded that an oil pipe in the jet’s Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engine had been “made with a thin wall section” […]

The NTSB’s recent release of a final report regarding the fatal November 13, 2011, crash of a Cirrus SR-22T shed light on a flight noteworthy for its aerobatics; it also invites speculation regarding the potentially untapped value of recorded flight data in general aviation. Both Avidyne and Garmin produce avionics (the Entegra and G1000, for […]