Accidents/NTSB

An NTSB final report (search ERA20LA237 here ) appears to shed at least some light on the cause of a series of puzzling runway excursions by high-performance Piper singles in the last couple of years. It appears improper ground handling led to the excursion by a PA46 at Titusville Airport in Florida on July 3, […]

AVweb’s General Aviation Accident Bulletin is taken from the pages of our sister publication, Aviation Safety magazine. All the reports listed here are preliminary and include only initial factual findings about crashes. You can learn more about the final probable cause on the NTSB’s website at www.ntsb.gov. Final reports appear about a year after the […]

The pilot and sole occupant of a single-engine Air Tractor AT-802F was killed when the aircraft went down during a nighttime firefighting mission near Colorado’s Estes Park on Tuesday. The aircraft, which was owned by Co Fire Aviation, departed from Northern Colorado Regional Airport (FNL) in Loveland a little before 6:15 p.m. local time on […]

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) found an overall decrease in fatal accidents in U.S. civil aviation for 2020 along with significant reductions in flight activity for the year. The board noted that 332 people were killed during general aviation operations last year compared to 414 in 2019. The general aviation fatal accident rate also […]

AVweb’s General Aviation Accident Bulletin is taken from the pages of our sister publication, Aviation Safety magazine. All the reports listed here are preliminary and include only initial factual findings about crashes. You can learn more about the final probable cause on the NTSB’s website at www.ntsb.gov. Final reports appear about a year after the […]

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers were in the right place at the right time to potentially save a pilot’s life off the coast of Florida on Friday. The federal agents were conducting a “maritime operation” when they came upon a sinking aircraft. “As agents and deputies approached the sinking plane, an individual was spotted […]

The actuators that move the elevators of a privately operated MD-87 that crashed at Houston Executive Airport Oct. 19 were jammed in the trailing edge down position and that made it impossible for the aircraft to take off. The NTSB preliminary report says the elevator actuators were both bent enough that they prevented the elevators […]

Medidata Solutions co-founder Glen de Vries and flight instructor Thomas Fischer were killed in the crash of a Cessna 172 on Thursday. A private pilot with an instrument rating, de Vries, 49, travelled to space alongside actor William Shatner onboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft last month. Fischer, 54, owned Fischer Aviation, a flight school […]

AVweb’s General Aviation Accident Bulletin is taken from the pages of our sister publication, Aviation Safety magazine. All the reports listed here are preliminary and include only initial factual findings about crashes. You can learn more about the final probable cause on the NTSB’s website at www.ntsb.gov. Final reports appear about a year after the […]

After the primary flight controls—elevator, rudder and ailerons on conventional airplanes—the most frequently used secondary control is pitch trim. That’s because a typical flight in any airplane involves a range of speeds, and pitch trim is used to minimize control forces throughout the operating envelope. Even if the pilot can supply that force, it’s fatiguing. […]