Flight Safety

A whistleblower says the FAA should pull Boeing’s production certificate for the Boeing 737 MAX because of the company’s “continued deception and gross errors in the design and production” of the aircraft. Curtis Ewbank, a 34-year-old flight deck systems specialist, wrote a letter to the Senate predicting more fatal crashes if systemic issues with the […]

Canadian military authorities say the pilot of a Sikorsky CH-148 Cyclone anti-submarine helicopter was apparently overruled by the aircraft’s fly-by-wire flight director and autopilot just before the aircraft crashed in the ocean off Greece on April 30. Preliminary assessment of the flight data recorder information recovered from the wreck of the helicopter, a military version […]

During a Wednesday hearing held by the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, FAA Administrator Stephen Dickson acknowledged that the FAA and Boeing both made mistakes in regards to the certification of the Boeing 737 MAX. “The manufacturer made mistakes and the FAA made mistakes in its oversight of the manufacturer,” Dickson said […]

Tulsa-based Spartan College continues to add to its training fleet with new Pipers, the companies announced today. Although saying that Spartan “announced today an order for its first tranche of 22 factory-new training aircraft,” in fact the school has already accepted 10 new Archers and two Seminoles from Piper this year. The remaining 10 Archers, […]

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 […]

Canadian authorities are still looking for evidence of the apparent crash of a light plane in the middle of a city at 1 p.m. June 6 and they aren’t saying much about the case. At least one person told authorities he or she saw a light plane plunge into the Fraser River that separates the […]

Rusty pilots, lighter-than-normal aircraft and new procedures have combined to create some anxious moments for passengers and crews as the airline industry coped with the coronavirus pandemic, according to Bloomberg. The news agency said the Commercial Aviation Safety Team, made up of representatives from the FAA, unions and airlines, has issued about 50 safety warnings […]

Although the coronavirus pandemic has created an instant surplus of pilots worldwide, it’s also created big gaps in the training pipeline and that has some countries bracing for a pilot shortage in a few years. In Japan, airlines, the government and universities are facing what they see as a looming problem because most pilots for […]

There’s a multitude of good reasons pilots should do a thorough walkaround before every flight and the occupants of an Icon A5 found yet another one earlier this month. The pilot and his passenger had just finished washing the sporty little amphib on the afternoon of June 3 and were taking it out for a […]

The commander of the Navy’s biggest flight school and one of his officers were killed with the single-engine private plane they were in crashed near Selma, Alabama, last week. Capt. Vincent Segars, the CO of the Naval Aviation Schools Command at Naval Air Station Pensacola, and Cmdr. Joshua Fuller, an integration officer for the command’s […]