Flight Safety

The FAA will issue a Direct Final Rule extending the registration interval for general aviation aircraft and the new seven-year duration applies to all GA aircraft. Until 2010, aircraft registrations lasted for the life of the aircraft but that resulted in a lot of inaccurate and ghost registrations on the books. In 2010, the agency […]

Two pilots and two flight test engineers were killed in the crash of a Cessna 208B Grand Caravan that was undergoing flight testing when the wings came off in Washington State on Friday. The plane, owned by Copper Mountain Aviation in Alaska, crashed near Everett, Washington, Friday morning after spending about a half-hour doing a […]

All 56 occupants of a twin-engine turboprop (possibly a Metroliner) were rescued after it crash-landed on a golf course near Milwaukee in a snowstorm. Three people and 53 dogs were on the plane. The dogs were in in danger of being euthanized and were being flown from Louisiana to Wisconsin for adoption. There were no […]

The FAA has adopted a final rule requiring commercial balloon pilots to have a current second class medical to fly passengers. The rule was adopted Wednesday but has been in the works for four years after Congress passed a bill mandating it. “Passengers can now rest assured that commercial balloon pilots must meet the same […]

A total of 24 aviation industry groups and prominent manufacturers have sent an open letter to all federal departments that regulate radio communications imploring them to delay the full rollout of 5G cellular services while they expedite codifying a comprehensive set of mitigations against potential avionics interference. The letter, signed by virtually all aviation groups, […]

For pilots, no matter how clear the skies, we always seem to be dealing with the wind. So, let’s look at wind from the perspective of an aviation meteorologist—where it comes from, what goes into forecasting it, and even some tips to help keep your flying safer. What Causes Wind? Unless all your flying is […]

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 […]

Investigators are looking for explanations into how two warbirds ended up in the same place at the same time at a Dallas air show on Saturday. So far they haven’t had any public insight into how six people died in the midair collision of a B-17 and a P-63 Kingcobra at the Wings Over Dallas […]

Considerable insights can be gained by examining aircraft accident statistics. But sometimes—well, the results aren’t earth-shattering, but can be interesting nonetheless. Take the issue of pilot experience. We would certainly expect more-experienced pilots to make fewer mistakes. But what’s the actual difference? It’s not something that’s only relevant to homebuilts. But my Experimental/Amateur-Built aircraft accident database […]

NASA has confirmed that an object discovered underwater off of the east coast of Florida is an artifact from the space shuttle Challenger. According to the agency, the artifact was located by a film crew on a dive looking for the wreckage of a World War II-era aircraft. NASA stated that it is still considering […]