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.
Two pilots for Air Berlin, approaching their last landing into Dusseldorf, Germany, before the carrier’s insolvency, instead flew along the runway, banked sharply, then pulled up and flew one last time around the airport. The maneuver was unauthorized by the airline, and the crew has been suspended. “We wanted to make a mark, a dignified […]
A commercial balloon pilot’s “pattern of poor decision-making” led to his balloon striking power lines and then crashing to the ground in Texas in July 2016, killing all 16 on board, the NTSB concluded in its final report, issued on Tuesday. It was the deadliest balloon crash in U.S. history. Contributing to the accident were […]
It was Saturday afternoon some years ago at our mid-sized, midwestern airport. Things were hopping; Air Guard jets were shooting landings on the long runway, airliners were arriving and departing, two or three aircraft were in the pattern practicing, transients were coming and going, and then there was my friend and me in a 1945 […]
In the first documented incident of its kind in Canada, a Skyjet Aviation flight hit a drone while on approach to Jean Lesage Airport in Quebec City on Thursday. The aircraft suffered minor damage and no one was injured. Skyjet flies King Airs and Beech 1900s for charter and medevac. Canada’s Transport Minister Marc Garneau […]
It’s been 70 years since Chuck Yeager squeezed into the sharply tapered cockpit of the Bell X-1 rocket plane and cracked a physical and psychological barrier that busted aircraft development wide open. After dropping from a B-29, Yeager reached Mach 1.06, causing what sounded like distant thunder to the crew on the ground. Then he […]
If I were an airplane salesman, I would starve to death. Airplanes that I think have no prayer of selling fly out of the factory almost faster than they can be produced. One of these was Diamond’s DA42, which I thought was a long shot. The DA62, one of the best GA airplanes ever, in […]
Air France plans to ferry a damaged A380 back to France from Goose Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador on three engines but before it can do that it has to install a new engine that won’t be running. The aircraft lost the front section of its No. 4 engine, including the 10-foot fan, over Greenland on […]
Spirit Airlines Captain Brian Halye was addicted to speedballs (a mixture of cocaine and heroin) for several years before his death, according to a report by the Dayton Daily News. The Dayton Daily News spoke with Halye’s mother after the death of her son and his wife from an accidental overdose on carfentanil, an incredibly […]
One of the benefits I have found of being in the aviation writing business is that I get the chance to fly a fair number of other people’s planes. Whether I am doing it to write a flight review on the type, test or check out new avionics, or am simply offered the chance to […]
The NTSB issued a Safety Alert (PDF) on Wednesday aimed at pilots who wear helmets while flying that have a cord attached to the aircraft’s internal communication system. Those cords may not easily detach in the case of an emergency, the safety board has found. The board cited two accidents, both involving helicopters, when the […]
Get the latest stories & special offers delivered directly to your inbox
SUBSCRIBE
