Flight Safety

The fall at Juneau Airport, where I’m a controller, generally sees pretty gross days, rain and lots of wind. One day we had six miles of visibility and winds of more than 25 knots and gusts more than 30. I was working a Coast Guard helicopter out and it occurred to me that I never […]

GA groups have mustered some considerable star power to fight the proposed privatization of air traffic control in the U.S. and will be unleashing the campaign on Tuesday at the opening general session of the NBAA-BACE in Las Vegas. Such well-known aviators as Apollo 13 astronaut Jim Lovell, Flight 1549 Capt. Chesley Sullenberger, aerobatics pilot […]

It’s been stormy in Europe this week and that, of course, has sent planespotters to runways all over the continent looking for gear-punishing landings and they found a couple. The bounce on the 747 landing at Schiphol in Amsterdam is cringeworthy while the A380 arrival at Frankfurt reminds us the wind demands respect, no matter […]

Danish officials have found parts from an Air France A380 engine that fell on the Greenland icecap on Sept. 30 following an uncontained failure. Investigators used information from the plane’s flight data recorder to narrow down the search area and a helicopter was sent to look for remnants of the main fan and front cowling, […]

Canadian officials say they’ll talk to their counterparts in India after air traffic controllers reportedly ignored a series of Mayday calls from an Air Canada Boeing 787 and ordered the crew to enter holds instead. The Dreamliner had finished a 16-hour flight from Toronto to Mumbai on Sept. 18 but a runway overrun by a […]

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 web site at www.ntsb.gov. Final […]

There were no serious injuries in the crash of a 1964 C-model Mooney in Middlesex, Virginia, on Saturday that was absorbed by a luckily vacant house. The owner lives elsewhere and there was no one living there. The aircraft, registered in Pensacola, had two adults and a teen aboard when it left Hummel Field near […]

The NTSB is investigating the collision between a civilian drone and an Army UH-60 helicopter that took place in New York on Sept. 21, the board said on Thursday. “TheNTSBis investigating the incident because the drone was a civilian aircraft,” the board said in a news release. The Army also is conducting its own investigation. […]

After a fashion, airplanes are toys. No, not all of them, because an Air Tractor earns its keep applying chemicals and Caravans haul skydivers and boxes. But if you own an old taildragger or a beater Cherokee, it’s a recreational toy. With that in mind, I’ve noticed some new developments in the toy market and […]

When I trained for my private pilot certificate, 91.103 was drilled into my head. “Each pilot in command,” it says, “shall, before beginning a flight, become familiar with all available information concerning that flight.” The core of that is straight from the Boy Scouts: be prepared. Now, as an air traffic controller, it concerns me […]