Flight Safety

The FAA is hoping to avoid millions of laser strikes this holiday season with a warning about seasonal laser projectors. “The FAA’s concern is that lasers — regardless of the source — not be aimed at aircraft where the beams can threaten the safety of a flight,” the agency’s Eastern Region offices said in a […]

The Harvard School of Public Health says 12.6 percent of pilots surveyed may have clinical depression and 4.1 percent reported having suicidal thoughts within the two weeks prior to completing the questionnaire. The study, the first to probe pilot mental health directly rather than through information gleaned from accident investigations, was conducted anonymously and the […]

A publication for antique car buffs is reporting the Environmental Protection Agency is intent on ending the production of ethanol-free gasoline, known in aviation as Mogas. Hemmings Daily said the Renewable Fuels Standard issued by the EPA a couple of weeks ago sets eliminating ethanol-free gasoline as a goal. It quotes the EPA as saying […]

The FAA on Friday finalized new aircraft certification rules for general aviation that are expected to help the industry bring new designs and technology to market more quickly and cheaply. The new Part 23 rules, first proposed in March, will go into effect in August 2017, changing the FAA’s traditional prescriptive design requirements to performance-based […]

The U.S. Marines have grounded their V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft based in Japan after one was destroyed in Okinawa on Tuesday, at about 10 p.m. local time. The Osprey was engaged in an aerial refueling exercise when a hose connected to the aircraft broke. The crew attempted an emergency landing in shallow water about 300 […]

The FAA published a final rule on Tuesday that will allow operators to use an enhanced-vision flight system to descend all the way to the runway, under certain conditions. Currently, the FAA allows pilots to depend on enhanced vision in lieu of natural vision only to 100 feet above the runway, and only under certain […]

The computer user refrain of “unplug it and plug it back in again” now applies to Boeing 787s. On Dec. 2, the FAA issued an airworthiness directive that required operators of all Dreamliners to power their aircraft down completely and turn them back on again by Dec. 9. The order came after the FAA said […]

Many years ago while flying into MFR (Medford, OR) as a newly minted pilot from a non-controlled airport I was nervous to say the least.I got a right downwind entry clearance but I absentmindedly entered an extended left downwind. Tower: “Experimental 123xy, okay left downwind will work just fine too, and cleared for left base […]

I was doing one of my periodic office de-clutters this week and up on the far northwest corner of one shelf, I found some interesting artifacts. Like an archeologist dusting off pottery shards, there was the last of my Jeppesen binders and a stack of paper charts, some dating to 1997. I can’t remember when […]

I’ve never felt it was appropriate that a pilot could obtain an instrument rating without flying in the clouds. From a safety standpoint—no matter what type of flying the pilot intends to undertake—it seems beyond ludicrous. I received instrument dual in IMC at a small airport in rural Iowa; one would think that it would […]