Flight Safety

There were no fatalities among the 143 people aboard a Miami Air Boeing 737 that went off the end of the runway at Naval Air Station Jacksonville Friday night. The plane was on a flight from Naval Station Guantanamo Bay in Cuba when it ended up in shallow water in the St. John’s River about […]

This week, AVweb’s news roundup uncovered reports on a new investment in Southern Airways, an operational expansion for Airstream Jets, the launch of a flight training academy and a successful aviation safety event in the U.K. Southern Airways Corporation has announced a strategic minority investment by SkyWest. According to Southern, the investment will boost the […]

uAvionix SkyBeacon ADS-B Installations In his article on the uAvionix SkyBeacon, Larry Anglisano said that a pilot could ask ATC if they see his ADS-B. It is true that ATC has the capability to see whether an aircraft is ADS-B equipped, we discourage pilots from asking that question. It encourages unnecessary frequency congestion and the […]

Test pilots on the Boeing 737 MAX weren’t provided key details on how the MCAS stability system functioned and apparently weren’t aware of its aggressive trim capability. The Wall Street Journal reports that MAX flight test pilots were also unaware that MCAS relied on data from a single angle-of-attack sensor. The report follows a revelation […]

Nearly two weeks after the event, SpaceX has confirmed that its Crew Dragon capsule was destroyed during ground testing on April 20 at Cape Canaveral, Florida. As previously reported by AVweb, the incident occurred during tests of the capsule’s abort thrusters. According to SpaceX Vice President of Build and Flight Reliability Hans Koenigsmann, the problem […]

When Boeing finally digs itself out of the self-inflicted PR disaster of the 737 MAX story—if it ever does—I wonder how it will be graded on handling the crisis. I wonder, but I’m kinda disposed to think it will become a textbook case of how not to behave in the searing glare of catastrophic bad […]

Southwest Airlines, Boeing’s biggest customer for the troubled 737 MAX, said this week that the airplane maker’s documentation incorrectly claimed that its aircraft had operable angle-of-attack disagree warning lights. But Boeing informed Southwest that the AoA function was actually inoperative only after the Lion Air crash in Indonesia last October. Even as Boeing finishes software […]

Addressing shareholders in Chicago Monday, Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg spoke to reporters about the 737 MAX’s troubled MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System). “The MCAS system as originally designed met our design and safety analysis criteria,” he said. When asked if the MCAS was the cause of both Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines accidents, Muilenburg sidestepped […]

Let’s start by dispensing with the obvious: “Loss of control in flight” is a lousy explanation, and not much better as a description. Eventually we’ll come up with something better, which hopefully will reflect the myriad ways pilots can let aircraft get away from them. Spatial disorientation in IMC is as different from a moose […]

AVweb’sGeneral Aviation Accident Bulletinis taken from the pages of our sister publication,Aviation Safetymagazine. 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 atwww.ntsb.gov. Final reports appear about a year after the accident, although some take longer. […]