Flight Safety

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 […]

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 consultant working for Chicago Executive Airport told a meeting last week that closing the busy facility’s crosswind runway will improve safety. Craig Louden, a project manager with infrastructure consultant Crawford, Murphy and Tilly Inc., told a room full of pilots at a meeting of the airport’s board of directors last week that closing Runway […]

The legal fallout from a Delta 777’s fuel dump over parts of Los Angeles last week has begun to pile up and the FAA has promised to “thoroughly investigate” the incident. The aircraft took off from LAX for Shanghai just before noon last Tuesday and on the tower tape the crew accepted a “high speed […]

A government advisory committee tasked with investigating FAA aircraft certification procedures and the certification of the grounded 737 MAX 8 has found that the proper process was followed by Boeing and the FAA when certifying the MAX. The Special Committee to Review the Federal Aviation Administration’s Aircraft Certification Process also found the FAA’s certification procedures […]

The FAA has officially opened its new indoor fire research facility in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The agency says the $5 million facility will be used to support research and conduct testing on fluorine-free firefighting foams. The project is being conducted in order to address a directive laid out in the FAA Reauthorization Act of […]

Pilots are taught to take off and land into the wind, and avoid landing or departing with a tailwind. There is a reason: The performance penalty of a tailwind is much greater than the benefit of a headwind. How big a penalty? Go to your POH and calculate it. The most common figure is to […]

It’s been unusually quiet in the pilot’s lounge at the virtual airport. We lost Old Hack last week. No, he wasn’t missing. I’m getting the words all wrong. We knew right where he was—in the long-term care facility where he’d been the last year or so—the place that he rudely referred to as the “feebs […]

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 investigating a runway incursion at JFK involving two Delta Boeing 757s, one of which was reportedly well into its takeoff roll. One aircraft had just arrived from St. Maarten and crossed the active Runway 22R after being told to hold short. A tower controller spotted the errant aircraft and ordered the crew […]