Flight Safety

AVweb’s Flight Safety section offers in-depth coverage of aviation safety topics, including accident analyses, risk management strategies, regulatory updates, and pilot training insights. Designed for pilots, instructors, and aviation professionals, this section provides timely information to enhance situational awareness and promote best practices in flight operations.

Understanding Wind Flow

Watching the continuous streaming of a waterfall can be mesmerizing. Something inside all of us expects it to have a beginning or end, so we watch and wait, and eventually we just let it go—realizing that it will continue falling down in that place, sometimes for centuries. The wind is like that too, but we […]

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Accident Probe: Single-Stage Go-Around

One of the first things student pilots learn is how to recover from a balked landing and go-around. Sometimes, the approach is so bad that we don’t even get to the “balk” part. But when we do—as when recovering from a bounced landing—we’re exposing ourselves to the bottom corner of an airplane’s operating envelope: low […]

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New Student Lands 152 After Instructor Blacks Out (Updated)

A student pilot on his first lesson in a Cessna 152 got some accelerated training in Australia on Saturday when his instructor collapsed in the right seat beside him. Max Sylvester and the unidentified instructor had taken off from Jandakot Airport in Perth in Western Australia when the instructor slumped into the student. “He’s leaning […]

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Pilot May Have Tried Bringing Booze To Cockpit

A Delta pilot who may have intended to take a bottle of vodka with him on a flight he was supposed to help fly from Minneapolis to San Diego has been formally charged with operating an aircraft under the influence. Gabriel Schroeder admitted to police that he ducked into a bathroom when he saw that […]

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MAX Certification Panel Takes More Time On Recommendations

The FAA says it will take at least a few more weeks for the panel reviewing the recertification of the Boeing 737 MAX to finish its work and that will likely push back the return to service. The Joint Authorities Technical Review is not documenting its work and won’t have a report or recommendations until […]

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Aviation Flees Dorian

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach has moved all its aircraft out of the potential path of Hurricane Dorian and closed all its facilities until Sept. 9 in advance of the approach of the powerful storm. ERAU officials are urging students and staff to take the necessary precautions to remain safe if the storm hits […]

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Groups Urge FAA To Block Supersonic Aircraft

A coalition of 28 public interest groups led by the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity sent a letter to the FAA asking the agency to refrain from removing the ban on overland supersonic flight or supporting rulemaking that might lead to the revival of supersonic aircraft on Tuesday. According to the Center for Biological Diversity, […]

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Hawaii Congressman Announces Commercial Air Tours Bill

Congressman Ed Case, D-Hawaii, announced his intentions to introduce a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives designed to tighten regulations for commercial air tours on Thursday. Citing the recent fatal crashes of a tour helicopter in Kailua and a skydiving flight at Mokuleia’s Dillingham Airfield, Case says his proposed “Safe and Quiet Skies Act” […]

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FAA Transitions To ICAO Flight Plans

The FAA is now requiring all pilots filing flight plans to use of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) flight plan format. The transition, which the agency first planed for October 2015, went into effect on Tuesday. According to the FAA, using the ICAO form (PDF) will allow for a greater variety of entry types […]

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Why We Lose Control

The aviation industry in recent years has highlighted loss of control in-flight (LOC-I) as the leading cause of general aviation fatal accidents. Many aviation organizations, including government agencies, have devoted considerable time and resources to target this problem and develop effective mitigations to reduce the number of LOC-I accidents. Much of that effort focuses on […]

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