Flight Safety

The U.S. Air Force is complaining about showboating Russian fighter pilots who have done barrel rolls over its pricey reconnaissance planes twice in the last couple of weeks. The most recent incident was Friday when an SU-27 flew within 25 feet of an RC-135 sensor platform and turned inverted over the top of the converted […]

Gyroplane pilot Paul Salmon’s flight this week from Cape Girardeau, Missouri, to Longview, Texas, and back will win a new distance record for his aircraft class. Salmon completed the closed-circuit flight Thursday in his Magni M22 Voyager, making 770 nautical miles in 10 hours and 37 minutes nonstop. The National Aeronautic Association, the sanctioning body […]

Last week, a drone reportedly hit an Airbus A320 on approach to London’s Heathrow Airport, but so far, there have been no officially confirmed drone strikes involving U.S. aircraft. However, witnesses have told AVweb that a drone did hit a hot-air balloon in flight, during a festival in Vermont in July 2014, causing damage to […]

Three people survived the crash of a Beechcraft Duchess in the back yard of a home in Pompano Beach, Florida, Monday. The Duchess clipped the roof of the house before crashing in the yard and erupting in flame. The pilot and two international students from Peru and Ecuador in the aircraft were badly burned. The […]

NTSB investigators have completed their fact-finding into the October 2014 midair crash at the Frederick, Maryland, airport, in which three people in a Robinson R44 helicopter died after a Cirrus SR22 “flew through [its] rotor system” in the traffic pattern. The safety board has not yet determined the accident’s probable cause. The factual report states […]

The U.S. Helicopter Safety Team, an industry-government partnership, has set a goal to reduce fatal civil helicopter accidents by 20 percent by 2019. The team said recently its efforts will focus on improving personal protection, aircraft equipage, pilot judgment and pilot decision-making. The team said total helicopter accidents have decreased by 52 percent compared to […]

An airline en route to [airport redacted] asked ATC if the had any smooth rides. Controller:“You won’t find a smooth ride until you taxi into the gate.” Pilot:“You haven’t been [airport redacted] lately. The taxiways are just as bad as this ride!” Kirk Johnson

Engaging in aerobatics—moving dramatically in the third dimension above our planet on a gloriously clear day—ranks right up there among the most delightful things a human can do. If flying represents freedom and an escape from the mundane of beetling across the surface of life, aerobatics is painting that escape and freedom with the broadest […]

Some Boeing 787 Dreamliners must undergo immediate repair or replacement of at least one engine, under an airworthiness directive issued this week by the FAA. The AD, issued without a comment period to speed up compliance, affects 43 U.S. 787-8s and 787-9sflying with General Electric GEnx-1B engines, according to the AD. The directive stems from […]

Airline crews should have more training on go-arounds, under recommendations issued this week by Russian investigators probing the March 19 crash of a Boeing 737 that killed all 62 people on board. The Interstate Aviation Committee’s interim report (PDF) on the crash at Rostov-on-Don airport details the FlyDubai jet’s flight path during the crew’s attempts […]