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.
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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
About 20 passengers aboard a United Airlines flight decided they really didn’t need to go to San Francisco after all on Saturday after their casually dressed captain delivered a bizarre rant over the PA system. The unidentified pilot boarded the aircraft in Austin wearing a ball cap and a t-shirt and opened by asking the […]
When you add high winds to a STOL competition, the results can be pretty amazing. Every February the Healthy Bastards Bush Pilot Championships at Omaka Aerodrome near Blenheim, New Zealand, attracts the country’s top precision pilots in an event similar to those popular in Alaska. This year, a howling wind blew down the grass runway […]
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 […]
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