Flight Safety

Way back in 1957, when I was an air traffic control trainee at RNZAF station Ohakea, I heard a Bristol freighter report:“We have just passed the Comet.” … then, a few seconds later, add:“The Comet was going the other way.” (The humor relates to the lumbering Bristol compared to the sleek inbound RAF Comet.) Murray […]

Pakistani authorities have charged a Shaheen Airlines captain with flying while under the influence of alcohol following a landing accident on Nov. 3. Capt. Asmat Mehmood is accused of having a blood alcohol content of .083 percent when he landed a Boeing 737 hard, blew the tires and ended up on the grass with some […]

We see it happen here all too often. The Franklin County Airport in Sewanee, Tenn., sits at the western edge of the Cumberland Plateau. During cooler months, northwest winds are thrust up the side of the plateau and swirl back down toward the airport. Tall trees surround the runway and make the airport difficult to […]

Flying an RV-8 from Los Angeles, California to Oxfordshire, England in 19 days may strike many as an adventure of a lifetime. For me, the 7000 NM trip was my way to return home after working four years in the Tesla Motors Design Studio in Hawthorne, California. Airfields along the Crimson Route, partially developed in […]

Mooney International Corp.’s M10T proof-of-concept model has its first flight on Wednesday from Chino Airport in California. Test pilot Len Fox flew the fixed-gear airplane for about 15 minutes, taking it through basic maneuvers before landing as the aircraft’s engineering team looked on. The M10T, unveiled in 2014 at the Zhuhai Airshow in China, is […]

A camera drone crashed a few feet behind a downhill skier competing in a World Cup slalom event in Italy on Tuesday. The hefty-looking aircraft dropped vertically and smashed to pieces as Austrian skier Marcel Hirscher negotiated a steep section of the course. He did not appear to notice the maelstrom of plastic behind him. […]

Monday was the first day of the FAA’s drone registry, and it was not without glitches, with users reporting that it went down for a while shortly after it opened, and others complaining that the FAA posted incorrect information for law enforcement about deadlines. The site is back up and running, and that law-enforcement information […]

While threading my way through thunderstorms coming on shore from a rig in the Gulf of Mexico, I heard New Orleans ATC say, “Tell your boss I like his movies.” After a short pause, I recognized the voice of Harrison Ford: “Thanks, and I like your radar vectors.” Jim Borger

Last Thursday, December 17, marked the 80th anniversary of the first flight of the Douglas DC-3, probably the most remarkable and successful transport created in the first half-century of powered flight. A buddy of mine kindly texted some photos to me that day—he was in a DC-3 in southern California on a commemorative flight. Of […]

Flight data and cockpit recorders on European airliners will have enhanced capabilities under new rules announced this week by the European Commission. Starting in 2018, locator beacons must be able to operate for 90 days instead of 30 and carriers must conduct over-ocean tracking of their jets, according to a Bloomberg report. In addition, cockpit […]