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 […]

Our resident curmudgeon is in his 90s now and doesn’t make it out to the pilot’s lounge at the virtual airport as often as he used to. About five years ago, Old Hack abruptly sold the immaculate Piper Super Cruiser he had bought almost new and announced that was done flying as pilot in command. […]

Operations at Manila Airport in the Philippines have returned to normal almost two days after a Chinese airliner left the runway on landing late Thursday. The Xaimen Airlines Boeing 737 ended up in a muddy infield after a second landing attempt in heavy rain. None of the 165 people on board were seriously hurt in […]

Two pilots died in a midair collision on Saturday when their paragliders came together during a race in Macedonia. One of the pilots, Innes Powell, was well known in the hang gliding and paragliding community in the U.K. and was taking part in the British Open Paragliding Competition in Kusevo, Macedonia. The other pilot, Ukrainian […]

Historic Flight Foundation founder John Sessions has been confirmed as the pilot of a 1930s airliner that crashed while taking part in a Canadian airshow last weekend. Sessions had recently acquired the deHavilland Dragon Rapide for his extensive collection. The organization was offering rides in the rare aircraft but it’s still not clear if those […]

The pace of technological change can be excruciatingly slow sometimes … we’ve been waiting eons now for battery-powered airplanes that never need maintenance … but it’s relentless. I’m reminded of the college classmate who told me, way back in the last century, that she was making a smart choice studying to be a keypunch operator, […]

The FAA has issued a statement warning operators of unmanned aircraft (UAS/drones) to stay away from wildfires. The agency emphasized that while proper use of drones for firefighting missions can provide a lot of useful information, unauthorized flights risk lives, especially since firefighting operations typically occur in the same airspace as the majority of hobby […]

Unleaded Avgas “Regardless of which fuel is selected, on that first takeoff, what will YOU be thinking?” I’ll be thinking “I’m glad I’m not flying behind a high-HP engine that needs 100-octane fuel” 😉 Joking aside, I’ve been saying that I’ll be glad to do away with TEL because I won’t have to worry about […]

A bill now under consideration in the U.S. Senate would provide grants to flight schools to help them recruit veterans to train to become commercial airline pilots. The bipartisan American Aviator Act, introduced by Senators Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisc., and John Hoeven, R-N.D., proposes to authorize up to $5 million per year to fund the program […]