Flight Safety

AVweb’s Flight Safety section offers in-depth coverage of aviation safety topics, including accident analyses, risk management strategies, regulatory updates, and pilot training insights. Designed for pilots, instructors, and aviation professionals, this section provides timely information to enhance situational awareness and promote best practices in flight operations.

FAA Mandates Otter Tail Inspections

The Seattle Times is reporting the FAA has ordered mandatory inspections of all 63 DHC3 Otters on the U.S. registry to confirm the correct assembly of the control links to the horizontal stabilizer. It’s specifically interested in ensuring a lock ring that secures the control mechanism is in place. The mandate comes after the NTSB publicly […]

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FAA Buried In Airline Seat Size Comments

More than 26,000 people responded to the FAA’s request for comments on the ever diminishing airline seat and they were pretty much unanimous. In fact, at least 200 commenters described airline travel as “torture” because of the seats. From claimed injuries to class warfare to economic discrimination, the litany of horrors tied to seat dimensions […]

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Judge Dismisses MAX Pilots’ Suit Against Boeing

A federal judge has ruled that Boeing doesn’t have to pay for the career disruption suffered by pilots who were freshly typed in the 737 MAX when it was grounded in March of 2019. According to Simple Flying Judge Steven C. Seeger, of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, agreed […]

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Food Poisoning Diverts Holiday Flight

Life imitated art over Maine in mid-October when a first officer on a TUI Airways Boeing 787 was felled by suspected food poisoning. The aircraft, which was on a charter flight from Doncaster in the U.K. to Melbourne, Florida (used by some holiday charters as a cheaper alternative to Orlando), had only two pilots for […]

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General Aviation Accident Bulletin, October 31, 2022

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 […]

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American Airlines Cadet Academy Announces First Collegiate Partner

American Airlines has partnered with Tulsa, Oklahoma-based Spartan College of Aeronautics and Technology to expand its Cadet Academy. Via the partnership, academy cadets will have the option to earn an Associate of Applied Science in Aviation Flight degree from Spartan College while simultaneously working on their FAA certificates and ratings. The agreement is the first […]

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FAA Nudges Pilots On See And Avoid

The FAA has published a reminder to all pilots to lift their heads from the electronics when circumstances demand. The agency issued an advisory circular on Friday laying out all the regs that mention see and avoid as fundamental to the pilot’s role in preventing midair collisions. “The most advanced piece of flight equipment in […]

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NTSB Issues Urgent DHC-3 Safety Recommendation

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has issued an urgent safety recommendation asking the FAA and Transport Canada to require all operators of De Havilland Canada DHC-3s to conduct an immediate one-time inspection of horizontal stabilizer actuator lock rings on the aircraft. The recommendation (PDF) follows the Board’s identification of a possible safety issue with the […]

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Is This The Right Runway?

It was in the news: Noted actor and aviation proponent Harrison Ford, while arriving at an airport on the west coast, reportedly landed on a taxiway, not the assigned runway. Oops! Dissecting that event is not this article’s purpose. But it did get me to wonder: How often does this happen? Why does it happen? […]

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FAA Threatens More 5G Disruptions

The FAA is threatening more 5G-related flight disruptions if federal communications officials don’t throttle the signals of smaller cellphone carriers around airports. In a letter obtained by Reuters sent last Friday, FAA Acting Administrator Billy Nolen told the National Telecommunications and Information Administration that 5G remains an interference threat for some radar altimeters and unless […]

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