Flight Safety

The FAA intends to significantly broaden its safety management systems requirement according to a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) published Jan. 11. The new rule would require charter, commuter and air tour operators along with aircraft manufacturers to implement safety management systems. “This proposed rule is intended to improve aviation safety by requiring organizations to […]

The head of Delta Air Lines says the unprecedented nationwide ground stop on Wednesday “is not the FAA’s fault” and called on legislators to boost the agency’s budget. “I lay this on the fact that we are not giving them the resources, the funding, the staffing, the tools, the technology they need,” he told CNBC. […]

The crew of a Delta Boeing 757 had to abort a takeoff at John Wayne International Airport in Santa Ana, California, when the right engine failed and caught fire on Tuesday. The aircraft had just started its takeoff roll when something let go in the engine. They were going about 40 knots when they hit […]

Technicians were doing a rare reboot of the NOTAM system when the decision was made to issue a ground stop early Wednesday. The system got glitchy on Tuesday afternoon and the agency found a single corrupted file in both the main and backup system according to sources interviewed by CNN. After nudging the system along […]

Icing affects flight operations in many ways. Accordingly, we offer some thought-provoking reports from pilots who’ve been there. Little has been said about instrument malfunctions due to icing, and we discuss those in particular. Chilly Carburetors An instrument-rated Commercial pilot operating VFR experienced a sudden power interruption in his Cessna 150, followed by a surge […]

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 […]

Pilots in border regions are wondering why the FAA has deleted much of the aeronautical information from non-U.S. airspace from its latest sectional charts. The late December release of the sectionals omit detailed airspace information in Canadian airspace, and the changes reportedly apply to Caribbean and Mexican regions along the border and off the coast […]

As expected, President Joe Biden has renewed the nomination of Phil Washington to head up the FAA. The agency has been without an administrator for almost a year and there were no hearings to confirm him in the last Senate. The new Senate sat on Jan. 2 and Washington was among several second-time nominations put […]

I basically live at an airport, and taxi to and from the airpark’s runway over what are residential streets the rest of the time. My normal taxi route includes a stand of bamboo, decades-old oak trees, mailboxes, a power pole and assorted fences. Tuesday is trash-collection day, and it can be a deal if your […]

That aviation is a highly regulated activity should come as no surprise to readers. Many other applicable rules are unwritten, developed by pilots after a mishap or mistake, which not necessarily resulted in an accident or incident. How we tackle becoming comfortable with new avionics aboard a familiar airplane is a question FAA regulations don’t […]