Flight Safety

Every pilot has the message drummed into him or her that if it suddenly goes quiet, they must“aviate, navigate, communicate” and “fly the airplane.” A Taiwanese pilot of a two-seat aircraft epitomized those qualities during a recent off-airport landing that was naturally captured from start to finish by his passenger’s cellphone. Many of the shots […]

It seemed innocuous enough—an email from Nathan Richards, Ph.D., a reader of our sister publication, IFR magazine, asking if someone would be interested in flying a Learjet in-flight simulator as part of a project his employer, Barron Associates, was doing on upset recovery. I wasn’t sure what an in-flight simulator was, but I’ve been very […]

The Air Force crew of MACHO 11 can now top Sully’s two-engine bird ingestion. The Air Force B-52 that crashed when departing from Andersen Air Force Base last May experienced indications consistent with failure of all four starboard engines due to bird ingestion. The Boeing B-52 Stratofortress is an eight-engine, turbojet-powered strategic bomber. The aircraft […]

A federal judge in Los Angeles accepted the plea bargain of Arnold (“Arnie”) Gerald Leto III on Monday, sentencing him to 10 months in jail for flying paying passengers without a pilot’s certificate—at least one flight in a Dassault Falcon 10 and at least one flight in a Cessna Citation II. Leto lost his certificate […]

I like the Black Knight scene in the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The Black Knight is getting beat in a sword fight by King Arthur and losing one limb after the other. He won’t admit he might be in over his head, instead he tells King Arthur, “Tis but a flesh wound.” […]

The National Weather Service is now providing a new product, Graphical Forecasts for Aviation, which is intended to provide a complete picture of the weather that may impact flight in the continental U.S. The webpage, which is built with modern geospatial information tools, includes observational data, forecasts and warnings that can be viewed from 14 […]

Nine people were killed when a de Havilland DHC-3 Otter hit a mountain in Alaska in June 2015, and on Tuesday the NTSB said the pilot had a history of making bad decisions. “Lives depended on the pilot’s decision making,” said NTSB Acting Chairman Robert Sumwalt. “Pilot decisions are informed, for better or worse, by […]

You’ve probably heard the term “silo’d” as management consultant-speak for an organization that operates with multiple independent entities that don’t talk to each other. At AVweb, we don’t quite fit that definition but we have a certain intentional insularity. Thus, over the weekend, when I saw early Saturday morning the story of yet another airline […]

New medical rules for pilots, known as BasicMed, take effect May 1, but starting today, pilots can start to prepare for the new requirements. Forms and checklists for both pilots and doctors are posted online at the FAA website. The FAA also has compiled a list of Frequently Asked Questions, and said the Medical Self-Assessment […]

About 25 years ago I was hauling cargo in a beat-up C210 at dusk near PFN, FL, and overheard the following: ATC: “Comair 1234, Nat’l Wx Service just advised us they have recently released a balloon in your area and they say “it should be approx your altitude, and it’s pretty large.” Pause of a […]