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.

In Case You Thought Airline Flying Was Always Safe, Consider 1958

Anyone who knows anything about aviation also knows at least two things about regulations: They’re written in blood and despite the belief that the FAA devises rules on a whim, the so-called tombstone mentality lives on. The bodies come before the rules, usually, and sometimes it takes a while. But unless we’re reminded of it […]

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Sebring On The Mend

When it looked like his airport might be hit by Hurricane Irma, Sebring Airport Executive Director Mike Willingham said he and his staff put into action a long-established emergency plan that he credits with preventing injuries and speeding recovery efforts. To be sure, there is plenty of damage, but Sebring will be ready to host […]

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Post-Hurricane Helper? Beware the Hidden Risks

Following hurricanes Harvey and Irma, the general aviation community distinguished itself by mobilizing to fly disaster-relief supplies and personnel into the affected areas and people and pets out. Being one of the fraction of one percent of our nation’s population that is a pilot, I watched news coverage of my sister and brother aviators who […]

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1,500-Hour Rule Relaxation Oppposed

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., says he’ll fight any move to relax rules that require airline pilots to have a minimum of 1,500 hours of flight time before they can fly airliners. Schumer was one of the architects of the controversial regs adopted by the FAA at the direction of Congress after the 2009 crash of […]

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Sebring, Lakeland Airports Clean Up

Airports throughout Florida are reporting varying degrees of damage from Hurricane Irma and the two most familiar to pilots outside the state are cleaning up. Reports out of Sebring Airport are sketchy but it appears the site of the Sport Aviation Expo took a big hit. In email communications with AVweb, officials for the Expo […]

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Area 51 Crash Plane A Flanker?

Speculation about the mysterious fatal crash of an aircraft near the secret military test center known as Area 51 in Nevada earlier this month took a sharp left turn this week with several pundits suggesting the aircraft wasn’t American at all. The working theory among the highly specialized military journalists who keep an eye on […]

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IFR En Route Blues?-Hardly

The IFR environment is different from most any other human experience—voluntarily strapped into a seat, within a cocoon of aluminum and a maze of wires, flying miles above the Earth. Without any visual reference, this event can be both stimulating and stressful. Of the three phases of IFR flight; departure, en route and approach, we […]

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Naples Airport Cleanup Begins

The CEO of Naples Jet Center at Naples Airport in Florida told AVweb he and everyone else involved in the cleanup after Hurricane Irma are writing a new playbook. “None of us have ever been through anything like this before,” Matt Hagans told AVweb after meeting with airport and FAA officials at the airport on […]

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Help Welcome, But Make Sure It’s Helping

The president of the largest benefit flying organization in the U.S. says help is welcome from private aircraft owners in the enormous relief efforts in Texas and Florida but it needs guidance and direction. Rol Murrow, who leads the Air Care Alliance, said ad hoc volunteer pilots often get in the way, sometimes cause extra […]

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Tree Saves Cessna Pilot

view on YouTube Landing in the trees is hardly ever a first choice, but it worked out for one pilot on Monday morning. Around 11:30 a.m. local time, a pilot flying a rental Cessna 172 from Robertson Airport crashed into a tree in the parking lot of an industrial equipment company adjacent to the airport. […]

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