Flight Safety

AVweb’sGeneral Aviation Accident Bulletinis taken from the pages of our sister publication,Aviation Safetymagazine, and is published twice a month. All the reports listed here are preliminary and include only initial factual findings about crashes. You can learn more about the final probable cause in the NTSB’s website atwww.ntsb.gov. Final reports appear about a year after […]

Flying is peaceful, the engine droning, wind whistling, your mind roaming to different thoughts as it gives birth to a new perspective. You reach out for your thermos to sip some hot coffee—but it’s not hot anymore. You start feeling cold, alone, and want to talk to someone, but you can’t. You fear that your […]

Michael Graham, the director of flight operations safety, security and standardization at Textron Aviation, has been nominated to succeed Earl Weener, who has served on the NTSB since 2010. If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Graham will complete Weener’s term, which expires at the end of 2020. He has been with Textron Aviation for 21 […]

The Aviation Herald is reporting that a TAM Boeing 777-300 made a successful but dramatic emergency landing in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, on Wednesday. Flight 8084, with more than 350 people on board, was still on the climb on its way to London when it experienced an almost total electrical failure shortly after takeoff from Sao […]

U.K. police have cleared a married couple of any involvement in the Gatwick Airport drone incursions after they spent most of the weekend in jail. Paul Gait, 47, and wife Elaine Kirk, 54, were arrested at their home in Crawley, near the airport, late Friday. They were arrested “on suspicion of disrupting services of civil […]

GA groups can claim a victory in the fine print of the latest government shutdown. The FAA has confirmed to AVweb that aircraft registry services will be maintained throughout the shutdown, which began at midnight Dec. 22 and is still the subject of political machinations in Washington. “Air traffic controllers, as well as those who […]

Are Towered Airports Safer? Overall, I consider towered airports to be safer. However, that is due mainly to the fact that they provide order to traffic procedures that does not always exist at nontowered fields. Plus, they normally handle larger aircraft with more experienced pilots who are accustomed to following directions from controllers. In my […]

I was preparing for some instrument and maneuvering practice with my instructor, Andy. Sitting in the apron area in a Cessna 172 with the engine running, I made my initial call to Texarkana Ground as follows: Me: “Texarkana Ground, Skyhawk 62689, Texarkana Flying Club; ready for departure with information Delta.” Texarkana Ground (in a completely […]

The FAA has issued a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) regarding the adoption of an airworthiness directive (AD) that would require wing spar inspections on nearly 20,000 Piper aircraft. According to the FAA, the AD comes after an investigation into the report of a fatigue crack on a Piper PA-28R-201 “revealed that repeated high-load operating […]

A Cessna C560 Citation V crashed shortly after takeoff from Fulton County Airport (FTY) in Atlanta, Georgia, on Thursday, killing all four people onboard. The aircraft went down in a football field in English Park at approximately 12:10 p.m. local time, about two miles from FTY. The aircraft’s destination was Tennessee’s Millington-Memphis Airport (NQA) There […]