Flight Safety

Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., introduced a bill in the U.S. Senate on Thursday that would require all “U.S.-registered turbine-powered rotorcraft certificated for 6 or more passenger seats” to be equipped with terrain awareness and warning systems (TAWS), flight data recorders (FDRs) and cockpit voice recorders (CVRs). The Helicopter Safety Act of 2020 cites the FAA’s […]

Sure as the BRS Save‑O’‑The‑Month calendar flips to a new year, we here at the Department of Self‑Righteous Finger Pointing present the best of the dumbest ways pilots have contributed to keeping the skies safe by rendering as many aircraft as possible unairworthy. Today, we review the year 2016, which reflected a modest improvement in […]

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 is proposing fine tuning a massive proposed AD on Piper Cherokee wing spars and removing more than a third of the aircraft originally covered. It’s also added a few models but the net reduction is 8,800 airframes from the original list of more than 20,000. The five aircraft removed from the list are […]

There was likely a lively debrief after a Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) AS350 B3 helicopter and an RCMP SkyRanger R60 surveillance drone collided while on a joint mission over a rural area of British Columbia in February. Although the incident happened in February, it didn’t make it to the Civil Aviation Daily Occurrence Reporting […]

If there’s one thing pilots are taught during their primary training, it’s to respect the limitations of the airplane they are flying. These can involve the detailed operating limits—especially airspeeds—found in the airplane’s flight manual, demonstrated crosswind capabilities, loading configurations, prohibitions against flight in known icing…the list is seemingly endless. Those limitations exist for a […]

Expressing frustration with the FAA’s reluctance to require data logging on all turbine helicopters, the National Transportation Safety Board has issued a new safety recommendation calling on manufacturers to step in and install the technologies voluntarily. The NTSB has asked for mandatory data recording in turbine helicopters before, with recommendations published in 2013 and 2015. […]

One thing I’ve had a visceral reaction to over the years is when popular media describe a certificated pilot who flies for personal reasons as an “amateur.” Over the years, I’ve more or less accepted such usage but—when given the chance—point out that the type of operation has no bearing on pilot skill levels, and […]

After an unstable approach that resulted in an over-the-fence speed of more than 200 knots, the crew of a Pakistani Airlines International A320 with 99 people aboard skipped the airliner down the runway three times on the engine nacelles before getting it airborne, according to the Straits Times. All but two of those on board […]

The coronavirus pandemic will hit operators who fly in Canada squarely on the bottom line as Nav Canada, the not-for-profit private corporation that runs air traffic services, hikes fees for commercial operations an average of 29.5 percent. Nav Canada isn’t allowed to make money but it also has to earn enough to cover costs and […]