Flight Safety

The Canadian government has suspended the operating certificate of West Wind Airlines after the crash of one of its ATR 42 airliners near a remote Saskatchewan airport that injured 25 people. Transport Canada ordered the Saskatoon-based carrier to cease operations after its inspectors found unspecified deficiencies in the way the business was being run. The […]

Bipartisan bills introduced in the House and Senate this week aim to promote aviation education and careers for women and girls. Senators Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, sponsored a bill that would promote expanding the role of women in the aviation workforce. The bill would direct the FAA to create a Women in […]

You’d think a flight instructor would limit stupidity. You’d be wrong, as many accidents involved CFIs reacting too slowly to student silliness. Then there’s the Kentucky instructor whose student wouldn’t do anything dumb, so he intervened, setting the Cessna 172’s fuel selector to OFF within, he thought, gliding distance of the runway. Only the instructor […]

When an Amtrak express train on its inaugural run from Seattle to Portland (ironically as competition to the dozens of daily flights between the two cities) piled onto a freeway on Monday it was known within hours that the train lacked critical safety equipment and was going 50 mph faster than the limit for the […]

Congressman Mark DeSaulnier is pushing to get cockpit voice recorder (CVR) data saved after a string of air carrier close calls at SFO this year. “From a public safety perspective, this is unacceptable, and I am concerned that we are missing opportunities to learn from all of the facts when safety issues arise,” DeSaulnier wrote […]

I was that stage of my instrument training where I was struggling to keep the shiny side up while monitoring radios, tuning navaids, and looking at approach charts. My instructor and I were shooting a Localizer approach to 17R at David Wayne Hooks airport in Houston. It was during the winter and already dark. Thankfully, […]

After their plane crashed in the wilderness of northern Saskatchewan passengers aboard a West Wind Aviation ATR 42 spent about a half hour freeing themselves from the wreckage as local police and volunteers mustered a rescue effort. The aircraft carrying 22 passengers and three crew took off from Fond du Lac, a fly-in-only First Nations […]

It almost invariably starts out simply. A half dozen or so pilots who are connected in some fashion—work, school, neighborhood, FBO customers—get to talking, and complaining, about their desire to fly more and the barriers to doing so. Most often the barrier is cost, sometimes it’s difficulty scheduling at the local flight school, others it’s […]

If you’re setting up a personal hangar for light DIY wrenching, it’s worth following the lead of maintenance shops that know what’s good. Walk through a real maintenance hangar and you won’t have to look hard to spot the Snap-On tool logo. Whether it’s a gigantic rolling tool cabinet or a pair of cutters, there’s […]

The pilot of a Ryan Navion has been criminally indicted by a federal jury in Alaska in relation to the crash of a Ryan Navion that killed one person and injured him and two others in 2014. The pilot, Forest Kirst, 60, has been charged with piloting an aircraft without a valid airmen’s certificate and […]