Flight Safety

Two people were killed in the crash of a Convair 440 near Ohio’s Toledo Express Airport (TOL) on Wednesday. The aircraft went down at approximately 2:37 a.m. local time just east of Runway 25 at TOL, hitting several unoccupied vehicles parked at an automotive repair business about one mile from the airport. The cargo flight, […]

In my view, there are four basic categories of aviation weather threats: low clouds and reduced visibility; turbulence and low-level wind shear; airframe ice; and thunderstorms (which may contain the three other hazards in one nasty package). When evaluating weather for a planned flight, I look at observations and forecasts with each of these specific […]

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 has banned unauthorized U.S. aircraft from entering Bahamian airspace to clear the airspace for government and sanctioned humanitarian flights. A TFR was issued Sunday at the request of the Bahamian government and any U.S. aircraft busting the TFR can expect a call from the agency. The move comes after days of frustration over […]

Airlines have ordered dozens of MAX simulators since the planes were grounded earlier this year. In its most recent quarterly earnings report, CAE, the largest manufacturer of airliner simulators, said it had taken orders for 47 MAX simulators and expected to deliver 22 by the end of the year. “Clearly there is going to be […]

The former chief technical pilot on the Boeing 737 MAX has invoked his Fifth Amendment rights and refused to turn over documents subpoenaed by the Justice Department as part of its broad investigation into the crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia. Mark Forkner played a key role in the development of the aircraft and worked for […]

Boeing’s next generation 777X project suffered a setback on Thursday when a door blew off during pressurization tests. There were no injuries in the mishap, which occurred on the static test plane, an aircraft that is shrouded by protective and structural metal superstructure to put massive stress on the airframe, sometimes to the point of […]

The NTSB found that the crash of an Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Piper PA-28R-201 that killed two people in April 2018 was caused by extensive fatigue cracking in the left-wing main spar, according to the final report (PDF) issued by the board on Tuesday. As previously reported by AVweb, the left wing separated from the aircraft […]

The FAA has established three Airspace Coordination Areas (ACAs) over the eastern coast of Florida and the Georgia to help manage and protect air traffic around Hurricane Dorian, the agency reported in a Tuesday update on its response to the hurricane. The FAA further cautioned that pilots should avoid flying in ACAs without permission and […]

After years of petitioning the FAA to ease access to airman medicals, AOPA was successful in getting BasicMed passed in 2017, and now the association says more than 50,000 pilots have taken advantage of the program. That’s a not-insignificant percentage of the 600,000 certificated pilots in the U.S., but one that AOPA expects to grow […]