Flight Safety

AVweb‘s weekly news roundup found reports on a newly approved training program for Eclipse pilots, a name change for Simhawk and a new vice president at Cadence Aerospace. AEROCOR has announced that it has received FAA approval for its Eclipse 500/550 initial and recurrent training programs. The firm is also packaging the training programs with […]

Drone Hysteria V2.0 I thought the article was well written and informative, thank you. One sector of aviation that seems to be mostly overlooked when Discussing drones is the Helicopter Air Ambulance industry. As a Helicopter Air Ambulance pilot drones have become a big concern. Consider my daily scenario. We land/take off and fly between […]

ForeFlight has introduced a new interactive airport familiarization tool for its Mobile Integrated Flight App. According to ForeFlight, Airport 3D View simulates airport environments around the world by using the company’s mapping and synthetic vision platform to combine high-resolution terrain with aerial imagery. As shown in the video below, 3D View lets users pan and […]

Airbus Helicopters and Helisim broke ground on a new helicopter pilot and maintenance crew training center in Grand Prairie, Texas, on Tuesday. According to Airbus, the Helisim Simulation Center will house the first H145 and H175 Level D full-motion flight simulators in North America. In addition, it will incorporate Airbus Helicopters’ existing training facilities including […]

Southwest Airlines is due to conduct its maiden flight from Oakland, California, to Honolulu, Hawaii, this week as part of its ETOPS (Extended-range Twin-engine Operational Performance Standards) certification. Partly delayed by the government shutdown, Southwest will complete its ETOPS certification flights over the next few weeks with the goal of launching California-to-Hawaii revenue flights by […]

Today’s reality quiz: You’re in an airport boarding lounge and the gate agent announces your flight has been delayed because a drone was sighted near the airport. In the improbably fantastical world I’ve created for this blog, the agent asks for a vote: Go or stay on the ground? How do you vote? How do […]

The National Transportation Safety Board released its 2019-2020 Most Wanted List of Transportation Safety Improvements and, among the broad recommendations of eliminating distractions, reducing fatigue-related accidents and full implementation of positive train control is this: Improve the safety of Part 135 flight operations. According to the board, “Most of the organizations that conduct Part 135 […]

Many of today’s workplaces seek to create a formalized “safety culture,” an environment where employees practice behaviors that minimize accidents, look out for their co-workers and where reporting unsafe conditions is encouraged, not subject to retaliation, and frequently rewarded. It can be a great goal, but it often creates an exaggerated sense of safety where […]

I recall an instructor, who before signing students off for the commercial checkride, would explain a few things he felt were critical when exercising commercial privileges. First, commercial pilots had to be smooth. After all, paying passengers would not be impressed if we could not fly the airplane well. Second, commercial pilots had to be […]