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.

Evidently, Legends Make Mistakes, Too

What the camera and teleprompter giveth, it can just as rapidly take away. That would be my salient observation from Harrison Ford’s recent dust-up at the Orange County Airport in California. You will not have missed, I’m sure, the story that Ford flew his Husky over the top of a stopped American Airlines 737 and […]

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NBAA Challenges Santa Monica Deal

NBAA and four businesses have petitioned the U.S. Court of Appeals to review the FAA’s deal with the City of Santa Monica to shorten the airport’s runway. Under the deal, the runway would be cut immediately to 3,500 feet from almost 5,000, limiting its use and likely forcing some of the current tenants to immediately […]

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FAA Doesnt Do Most Aircraft Certification Work

More than 90% percent of certification work on new aircraft and aircraft parts is outsourced by the FAA to the manufacturers themselves, according to a GAO report. Similar to the FAA delegation of airman certification authority to Designated Pilot Examiners, the FAA has been authorizing most certification work to be performed by employees of the […]

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Responding to the Unexpected

Truth is often stranger than fiction. Perhaps that’s why reports from the Aviation Safety Reporting System are so compelling. There is a lot to be learned by reviewing the mistakes other pilots have made—and who then lived to tell us about them. Here are some recent ones that have several critical learning points. Attitude Indicator […]

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Pilot Training Cited In Military Crashes

Military pilots aren’t flying often enough to be as proficient as they need to be, Lt. Gen. Jon Davis, the head of Marine Corps aviation, told reporters in Washington, D.C., recently. “We’re about three hours per pilot per month better than we were [in May 2015], but that’s not good enough,” Davis said, according to […]

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Regional Jet Strikes Deer During Takeoff

A Canadair CRJ-700 operated by PSA Airlines struck a deer during takeoff from Charlotte’s Douglas International Airport on Wednesday morning. In an air traffic control recording (full audio from LiveATC.net below), the pilot and the tower controller discuss an unidentified “loud bang” heard by the pilots, which the pilot of another aircraft reported as a […]

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NBC: Harrison Ford Lands On Taxiway

NBC News reported Tuesday that Harrison Ford mistakenly landed his Husky on a taxiway at John Wayne Airport in Orange County, California, on Monday, after flying above an American Airlines 737 full of 110 passengers and 6 crew. The FAA told NBC that Ford was given correct landing instructions by ATC, and he read them […]

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Should The FAA Be Run By A Pilot?

General aviation pilots have several auto-fume modes. One of them is ADS-B and anything to do with medicals is a good way to get people spun up. So is the argument that the administrator of the FAA should be a pilot. This is a perennial and it came up last week when President Donald Trump […]

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FAA: Helicopter Accidents Decline

The accident rate for helicopters has fallen for the third year in a row, the FAA said on Monday. In raw numbers, there were 106 helicopter accidents in 2016, including 17 fatal accidents, a 12 percent decrease compared to the previous year and a 27 percent decrease compared to 2013. “The FAA and the helicopter […]

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Short Final

I was listening to Unicom at my local airport in Northwest Ohio when I heard the following exchange between two jets on the ramp. Citation 1234: Taxiing to runway 18 for departure. Lear 5678: You going to Columbus? Citation: Yeah Lear: Wanna Race? Citation: That’s not fair, you’re in a Lear! Ben Stevens

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