Flight Safety

Senator James Inhofe, R-Okla., introduced S.755 (the Fairness for Pilots Act) on Wednesday, which, if signed into law, would offer an additional level of appeals for pilots facing enforcement actions. Under existing law, pilots facing loss or suspension of their certificates due to “significantly unsafe” violations of FAA regulations may appeal to an NTSB administrative […]

The pilot of an Airbus AS350 helicopter that crashed in July 2015 failed to perform a preflight hover check, the NTSB said in a synopsis of its probable-cause report on Monday. If he had performed the hover check, as required by operational procedures, he could have found that he hadn’t returned the yaw servo hydraulic […]

The NTSB should conduct an internal review to determine why several recent reports regarding general aviation accidents included “speculative” conclusions that aren’t supported by factual data, AOPA said on Tuesday. In a letter to the safety board’s acting chairman, Bella Dinh-Zarr, AOPA’s government affairs vice-president Jim Coon objected to reports that cited medical incapacitation of […]

The FAA banned jets from Florida’s Lantana/Palm Beach County Airport in 1973, but that ban is now lifted, the Palm Beach Post reported on Tuesday. Errol Forman, a retired Eastern Air Lines pilot, had landed his newly acquired 1983 Cessna Citation I/SP jet there in May, and a neighbor reported the violation to authorities. Forman […]

During a VFR approach in a busy airport in mostly-Catholic Colombia, a student pilot was given landing clearance. It seemed she didn’t understand the controller. Student: “Could you please confirm?” Tower:Sure: I confirm you in the name of the Father, in the name of the Son…” Of course the controller gave her the right instructions […]

The pilot of a Turbine Otter that crashed in Alaska in 2015, killing all nine aboard, had turned off the terrain awareness and warning system before the aircraft hit the side of a mountain near Ketchikan. The NTSB released the factual docket on the crash of the Promech Air crash, which occurred in marginal VFR […]

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 […]

Harrison Ford was contrite and apologized to air traffic controllers at John Wayne Airport in Orange County last Feb. 13. The FAA released tapes of two radio exchanges and one phone call between Ford and John Wayne tower personnel on Friday. “I’m the schmuck who landed on the taxiway,” Ford told tower personnel in a […]

It had been a busy flight with some heavy weather for a Cessna 182. I was anticipating the final vector for the ILS and fumbling with the tablet’s presentation of the approach plate (I had vowed to make friends with the electronic flight bag). The realization that the sound had unexpectedly changed brought me back […]

NTSB investigators have found that the right elevator was jammed on the chartered Ameristar Boeing MD-83 that ran off the runway on March 8 at Willow Run Airport in Ypsilanti, Michigan, with the Michigan men’s basketball team, the Wolverines, on board. In an update released on Tuesday, the safety board said their post-accident examination revealed […]