Flight Safety

Back in the late ’90s, as a radio operator on MC-130E Combat Talons, I was returning to EGI from the East Coast. As I neared home, the pilot asked:“R. O., see if we can get lower.” I asked ATC for lower, as directed by the pilot. The kind folks at ATC denied our request. The […]

Letter of the Week:Frequent Reporting Best Anyone who flies on VFR weekends knows that CTAFs are awash in squealing verbal garbage, making it often impossible to announce a position or identify the cluck who’s announcing every stinkin’ leg of the traffic pattern or that he’s taxiing to the runway at your airport so you can […]

The CEO of the world’s biggest iron ore company was killed, along with his family and a hired pilot, in the crash of his kit-built aircraft in Sao Paolo, Brazil, on Saturday. Roger Agnelli, his wife, two grown children and their spouses died when their Comp Air 9 turboprop, which is a homebuilt aircraft in […]

Structural failure accidents, often from getting too friendly with thunderstorms, kill both people and what little good press GA is able to garner. In the last decade, 50 accidents—about 10 per cent of all accidents—were due to in-flight structural failure. Worse, even with better weather data in flight, these accidents aren’t going away. Turbulence, Not […]

Pilots of a FlyDubai Boeing 737-800 that crashed Saturday morning while landing at the Rostov-on-Don airport in southern Russia were warnedof “moderate wind shear” minutes before the accident, according to an ATC tape released later in the day. All 62 people on board died. The jet crashed at a steep angle about 3:50 a.m. local […]

A Lufthansa Airbus A380 reported a close call with a drone near Los Angeles International Airport Friday afternoon, prompting local law enforcement to search for the operator. The crew notified the FAA of an unmanned aircraft flying 200 feet above the jet about 14 miles east of the airport at 5,000 feet, the Los Angeles […]

The government would cover the costs of air traffic control and related safety services at aviation events, under an amendment (PDF) to the FAA reauthorization bill that was approved by a Senate committee this week. If approved as part of the bill, the amendment would turn back the FAA’s practice in recent years to bill […]

The pilot of the Beechcraft B200 King Air that crashed into a building at Wichita’s Mid-Continent Airport in 2014 failed to follow emergency procedures including correct use of rudder, leading to loss of control, the NTSB said in its probable cause report released this month. The pilot, a retired air traffic controller, was killed along […]

A Senate committee moved ahead with its version of reauthorization for the FAA on Wednesday, approving legislation that includes third class pilot medicals and aircraft certification reform. The bill’s major components remained intact during the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation markup session. It would see the FAA through Sept. 30, 2017, ordering the […]

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have come up with a new system for generating electricity that couldshow promise for powering small airplanes.”The potential energy density of this power source is on the same scale with petrochemical energy sources, and it is orders of magnitude higher than commercial lithium ion batteries,” Michael Strano, an […]