Flight Safety
AVweb’s Flight Safety section offers in-depth coverage of aviation safety topics, including accident analyses, risk management strategies, regulatory updates, and pilot training insights. Designed for pilots, instructors, and aviation professionals, this section provides timely information to enhance situational awareness and promote best practices in flight operations.
GAO Reports On Pilot Supply Issues
Flight schools are finding it hard to retain their instructor ranks because airlines are hiring away their staff, a government study reported this week. At the same time, flight schools find it challenging to recruit new students, due to the high cost of training, which can often exceed $50,000, on top of tuition. The U.S. […]
NTSB Finds Wing Crack In Piper Trainer
NTSB investigators working to determine the cause of the recent in-flight breakup of a Piper trainer have discovered a wing crack in another Piper PA-28R-201 aircraft, the agency said on Tuesday. The crack measured about 0.040 inches long and deep. “The plane inspected had a similar number of total airframe hours and cycles [to the […]
First Officer Partially Blown Out When Windscreen Shatters
A Chinese crew landed an Airbus A319 safely on Monday morning after the cockpit windscreen shattered at 30,000 feet, and the first officer was “partially blown out of the aircraft,” according to Captain Liu Chuanjian. “The situation was very critical,” said Jiang Wenxue, an official with China’s Civil Aviation Administration. “The windshield was blown off […]
Video: One Airbus Shears Off The Tail Of Another
Authorities in Turkey are investigating why an Asiana Airlines Airbus 330-300 sheared off the vertical stabilizer of a parked Turkish A321 in Istanbul over the weekend. Video taken of the incident reveals that the Asiana flight was taxiing for a flight to Seoul when it struck the other airplane parked in an alleyway. No one […]
Air Force Beefs Up Airshow Fire Protection
The Air Force will position fire trucks on the flight line of airshows hosted by its bases as part of the settlement of a lawsuit over the burning death of a pilot in 2014. Eddy Andreini, 77, crashed his modified Stearman show plane inverted while performing a ribbon cut at the Travis Air Force Base […]
Southwest 1380: Flew Like a Rock
In an interview with ABC’s 20/20 news magazine, the crew of Southwest Flight 1380 said the aircraft rolled sharply left and vibrated violently “kind of all at once” after it suffered an uncontained fan failure on April 17 near Philadelphia. Although the flight landed safely, one passenger was killed when engine debris pierced a window […]
GA Piston Sales: Barely Above A Flat Line
As I was putting a sharp pencil on last week’s GA production numbers from GAMA, I couldn’t decide if I was looking at a flat calm mill pond or the dead quiet before some kind of storm. So I graphed out a decade worth of production numbers and I’m going with a pond that could […]
Podcast: Bailing Out Of A Warbird
Ron Carlson’s first parachute jump is one to remember. He and his passenger Kenny Franzese bailed out of a TBM Avenger over the mountains of Arizona on May 7. He was interviewed by Russ Niles for this extended (15-minute) podcast. Duration: 15.05 File Size: 14.8 Mb download here
General Aviation Accident Bulletin
AVweb’s General Aviation Accident Bulletin is taken from the pages of our sister publication, Aviation Safety magazine, 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 at www.ntsb.gov. Final reports […]
