Flight Safety

German authorities are investigating the big surprise a DHL 757-200 crew got early Saturday when the huge cargo door opened in flight. The aircraft took off from Leipzig about 5:30 a.m. headed for Frankfurt. As it passed through 5,300 feet the door opened and parts of the frame tumbled to the ground around a power […]

Piper Cherokee owners who proactively checked the potentially problematic spars on their aircraft may not be in compliance with the AD that was finally approved last month. The FAA has asked aviation groups to spread the word that owners of affected PA-28s and PA-32s who had their spars checked before the AD became final on […]

The first thing that happened was a sudden shift in “safety” concerns over to handling COVID-19. Should I go fly? Wear a mask? But, where we began and where we’re headed now are two very different paradigms. The aviation safety culture we’ve built over decades is somewhat perishable—it’s not just like “riding a bike”—and it’s […]

Sriwijaya Air Flight 182 experienced a thrust imbalance prior to going down in the Java Sea on Jan. 9, 2021, according to the preliminary accident report issued by Indonesia’s Komite Nasional Keselamatan Transportasi (KNKT/National Transportation Safety Committee) on Wednesday. Data from the Boeing 737-500’s flight data recorder (FDR) showed that the thrust lever for the […]

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 FAA has announced it will investigate last week’s spectacular crash landing of SpaceX’s SN9 Starship prototype in Texas. The silo-like rocket performed flawlessly through launch to 50,000 feet, where it hovered briefly before doing its “belly flop” maneuver to descend. One of the engines needed to brake the rocket in its final descent didn’t […]

The pilot killed in the crash of a Cessna 560 in Oregon in early January had just flunked the type rating course and was likely on his first solo flight in the aircraft, according to the NTSB’s preliminary report. The aircraft spiraled from 31,000 feet to a mountainous area on the Warm Springs Reservation on […]

As President Joe Biden enjoys a weekend at home in Wilmington, Delaware, general aviation is continuing to operate, even within the high-security 12-NM ring of the 30-NM TFR that follows him when he travels. AOPA is reporting that the TFR in place until Monday is a big improvement over the draft version rolled out in […]

The NTSB’s materials lab is now poring over the rudder of a Piper Super Cruiser that bent almost horizontally in flight in Alaska last June. The board recently issued a preliminary report on the incident, which created some challenges for the two pilots on board but worked out safely in the end. A private pilot […]

I learned a lot about flying airplanes while working 60 feet underground. I served as a missile launch control officer in the U.S. Air Force in the waning days of the Cold War. We worked in two-person crews, a commander and a deputy, behind a sealed blast door in a small room filled with old-school […]