Flight Safety

I had to fly a go-around the other day. My instructor and I were landing in my Debonair at a familiar airport on a gusty day after 1.5 hours of instrument work. Although I was accustomed to the airport and the visual approach, I had forgotten how windy conditions at this particular runway could wreak […]

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 […]

A retired top U.S. military official says showboating Russian fighter pilots are posturing for social media, trying to go viral to raise the profile of their military and maybe sell some airplanes. In the past few weeks U.S. military have complained their aircraft have been buzzed by Russian fighters, including an inverted Su-35 that came […]

One would think that a fairly simple recurrent training requirement established by the FAA over 40 years ago would be a ho-hum thing by now. One would be wrong. The FAR Part 61.56 requirement to fly with an instructor biennially (every two years) and receive an endorsement of a pilot’s basic fitness for flight is […]

The FAA has announced plans to temporarily adjust operating hours at approximately 100 air traffic control towers nationwide due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. When choosing how to modify hours, the agency says it looked at hourly aircraft counts and safety during non-towered times, air carrier, air taxi, and special operations, the ability of the […]

The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) announced the launch of a new online flight planner on Wednesday. The customized version of the iFlightPlanner platform is intended to replace the AOPA’s previous online flight planning tool, which is being retired at the end of the month. iFlightPlanner features include a Google Maps interface with U.S. […]

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 […]

Citizens aren’t the only ones isolated these days and a New Jersey pilot took advantage of the empty skies in what is normally the world’s busiest airspace with a video tour of the big three New York airports in his RV-8 last week. “I flew my RV-8 from Caldwell, NJ to EWR>LGA>JFK the other day […]

When Florent Gagné needed some air last week the last places he expected to end up were on a freeway and on the evening news. The Quebec City pilot took off for a cobweb-clearing break from self-isolation on Thursday and was over the main freeway to Montreal when the engine in his Piper Cherokee began […]

The FAA has issued guidance to airlines who want to take the seats out of idle aircraft and fill them with cargo. The drastic drop in passenger traffic has had a parallel effect on available cargo space. Some airlines were flying cargo-only flights with empty seats upstairs but the safety alert for operators (SAFO) issued […]