Flight Safety

For today’s blog, I was about to write that hardly a week goes by that we don’t report on some new electric aircraft initiative. Then I was suddenly seized by the impulse to, you know, actually check to see if that statement is correct. As is so often true of generalities, it’s not correct. Actually, […]

The crew of a CH-47F Chinook helicopter used an unusual maneuver—sitting the tail of their aircraft on the mountain for several minutes, while still flying, with the nose in the air—to successfully rescue a Texas man from the slope of Mount Hood, in Oregon, last week. The rescue site, near the top of the 11,249-footmountain, […]

In this world where cell phones can perform more functions than the computer of only a few decades past, many pilots prefer to brief themselves. Doing so when the weather is good is easy—when the online aviation weather options show a dry, high pressure system with no indication of turbulence or other adverse weather advisory. […]

The BasicMed checklist we’ve been reviewing in the Healthy Pilot series ticks the usual boxes—dizziness, sensitive gut, cancer, kidney stones and more. They’re all there, even depression and mental acuity. But the central player in your personal health history is your heart. It unfailingly pumps oxygenated blood out to the extremities, distributes nutrients to the […]

The FAA has cleared Doc, one of two flying B-29s, for passenger flights and they’ll start at the Heavy Bomber Weekend in Madison, Wisconsin, on July 20. Doc will be at AirVenture 2018 but so far no ride program has been announced. The big bomber has been on the airshow circuit for more than a […]

At least 33 passengers on a Ryanair flight to Croatia were treated in hospitals for bleeding ears, mouths and noses when the packed Boeing 737-800 was put into an emergency descent for a pressurization problem. The aircraft was carrying 189 passengers when it dove for breathable air early in the flight from Dublin to Zadar. […]

A 55-year-old man has been arrested in Scotland after a Greenpeace protester flew a powered parachute within a few hundred feet of U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday. The unidentified man is accused of buzzing the crowd watching as Trump toured his golf resort in Turnberry. The pilot unfurled a banner that read “Trump Well […]

Air China will take a “zero tolerance” approach to its investigation of a first officer’s apparently bungled attempt to sneak an in-flight vape aboard one of its Boeing 737s last Tuesday. The FO is reported to have meant to shut off the air recycling system aboard the aircraft while it was at cruise to cover […]

I had an instructor who had a teaching technique unlike any other instructor I’ve flown with. Let’s call it teaching by ambush. On this particular flight, we were in a non-pressurized twin, repositioning it to pick up our passengers. It was a cold morning, and I was a complete newbie to the multi-engine training. My […]

The governor of Hawaii signed a bill removing criminal penalties for many airport violations last week. Prior to the bill’s passing, Hawaii was the only state where violations unrelated to airport security could result in criminal misdemeanor charges. Many local and national pilot groups have been working toward decriminalization legislation, with AOPA calling it the […]