Flight Safety

One thing all pilots feel at some point on any flight is a sense of pressure. On a good-day local flight, it could be something as simple and routine as wanting to make an “are-we-down-yet-smooth” landing to impress someone. At the other extreme might be a boss who absolutely, positively needs to be at a […]

The FAA has offered balloonists operating in and around Albuquerque a temporary exemption from current ADS-B equipage requirements while a longer-term arrangement is being devised. As we reported earlier, operators in the unofficial “balloon capital of the world” complained that the ADS-B rules were keeping them out of airspace they’d been using for passenger flights […]

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 […]

Alaska Airlines and regional carrier Horizon Air have partnered with Oregon-based flight school Hillsboro Aero Academy to launch the Ascend Pilot Academy (APA). Aimed at addressing “a growing pilot shortage coupled with increased travel demand,” APA is expected to train up to 250 students a year. Alaska and Horizon are estimating that they will need […]

ATP Flight School announced on Monday that it has purchased 20 new advanced aviation training devices (AATDs) from simulator company Frasca International. Equipped with Garmin G1000 avionics, the flight training devices (FTDs) will be configured to represent the flight decks of either Piper Archer or Cessna Skyhawk aircraft. The deal is valued at approximately $6 […]

The NTSB says Joby’s uncrewed prototype eVTOL crashed because of an unspecified “component failure” and the crash appears to have occurred shortly after some high-speed testing in a rural area of California. The NTSB’s preliminary report is short and says the tiltrotor multicopter was substantially damaged when it crashed near Schoonover Airfield, an Army facility […]

Just as traffic picks up again, United Airlines will be able to resume the use of 52 of its Boeing 777s after some modifications. The FAA is finalizing airworthiness directives that will lift the grounding of 777s with Pratt & Whitney PW4000 engines. One of the United aircraft had an uncontained failure of one of […]

Part of being able to forecast comes from reading the sky, because so much of what’s taking place in the atmosphere can be seen visually. When I worked the forecast counter in the Air Force, I occasionally stepped over to the window for a quick look while filling out the weather briefing forms. The pilots […]

I’m a firm believer in using supplemental oxygen; there’s a portable O2 tank in my airplane right now. For a variety of reasons, I usually go on oxygen when I’m going to be at 10,000 feet or higher for any length of time. I typically fly long legs, and when I use oxygen, I’m not […]

Australia’s Air Transportation Safety Board has issued a Safety Advisory Notice recommending that pilots who do low-level work wear an approved helmet to improve their chances of survivability in the low-energy crashes that claim pilots doing this work every year. “A correctly fitted and secured flight helmet can significantly reduce injuries and save lives in […]