Flight Safety

Island Express, the aircraft charter company that owned the Sikorsky S-76 helicopter that impacted a hillside in Calabasas, California, on Sunday killing all nine people onboard including retired NBA star Kobe Bryant, is a VFR-only operation, according to information from the NTSB and a former company employee. As previously reported by AVweb, the Part 135 […]

A U.S. Air Force Bombardier E-11A crashed in Ghazni province, Afghanistan, on Monday, killing both service members on board. A spokesperson for the U.S. Forces-Afghanistan said that the remains of the victims were recovered on Tuesday along with the aircraft’s flight data recorder. The remnants of the aircraft were then destroyed by U.S. troops. As […]

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 […]

Airshow pilot Mark Nowosielski and his passenger Nathan Sorenson died in the crash of the Mustang II homebuilt they were flying in Coweta County, Georgia, on Saturday. Nowosielski was part of the Twin Tigers team with Mark Sorenson, who is Nathan’s father. The two had flown from Florida where it was reported that Nowosielski had […]

The Collings Foundation is hopeful it will be able to resume passenger flights on its historic aircraft after the FAA finishes a review of its operations. The Collings B-17 Nine-Oh-Nine crashed at Bradley International Airport in Hartford, Connecticut, in October, killing seven and injuring another seven, including one person on the ground. It canceled the […]

Airlines got mixed messages about the return to service of the Boeing 737 MAX last week. Early in the week, Boeing said it was predicting the plane wouldn’t be ready for passengers until at least June. On Thursday, FAA Administrator Steve Dickson huddled with the CEOs of the U.S. airlines affected by the grounding of […]

A Florida man is facing a laundry list of charges after he allegedly pointed a laser at least four aircraft, including a police helicopter. Charlie Chapman Jr., 41, was apprehended at an industrial site near Bradenton-Sarasota Airport after several complaints from pilots. One of the pilots reported he was temporarily blinded and had lingering blurred […]

Retired NBA star Kobe Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter Gianna were among nine victims of a fatal helicopter crash near Los Angeles on Sunday. Bryant and the others were aboard a Sikorsky S-76 that went down on a wooded hillside in Calabasas about 9:47 a.m. local time. Initial reports said he owned the S-76. It […]

A C-130 Hercules conducting firefighting operations near Cooma, New South Wales, Australia, crashed on Thursday, killing all three people onboard. The victims, all of whom were U.S. residents, have not yet been identified. The aircraft was operated by Coulson Aviation, a subsidiary of Canada-based Coulson Aircrane with branches in the U.S. and Australia. Coulson grounded […]

Until 2004, Flight Service conducted most preflight briefings. Then self‑briefing arrived. By 2017, 96 percent of all pilots self‑briefed and 83 percent of flight plans were filed online. But many of us don’t know how to get a thorough self‑briefing. Between 2010 and 2013, the NTSB could find not weather briefing records in 32 percent […]