Flight Safety

As part of its Fly Safe campaign aimed at general aviation pilots, the FAA on Tuesday posted information and links about the effect of drugs on flying skills — including prescription and over-the-counter medications, as well as illegal drugs. A 2011 study by the FAA found that 42 percent of toxicology reports from pilots who […]

Back when I was a student pilot in Navy Flight School, I was flying solo along the beach, conducting precision aerobatics practice. As I finished a barrel roll and set up for a loop, I heard a student-and-instructor aircraft check in to the area, and the exchange went like this: Instructor:“Solo aircraft 123, was that […]

The champagne was flowing but so was the oxygen and that meant an easyJet flight from Gatwick to Turkey spent seven hours on the ground in Milan. The aircraft was taking holiday makers to a Turkish resort when a flight attendant did her best to add to the festive atmosphere. But in uncorking a fresh […]

I get a certain perverse pleasure out of fishing for stupidity and not to make light of my fellow aviators’ misfortunes, the Grand Banks of stupidity is found in the NTSB accident database. Here, you will find a vast and ever varied trove of trained, government-certified airmen enlisting the aid of perfectly serviceable airplanes to […]

Departing from a 4200-foot runway, the twin engine Beech B60 Duke lifted off after a 1500-foot takeoff roll. The landing gear was immediately retracted but at approximately 100 feet agl, a large puff of black smoke erupted from the left engine. Witnesses stated the airplane pitched up and then banked sharply to the left. At […]

An airshow pilot was killed during practice for the New York Air Show on Friday after the tail separated from the aircraft. The aircraft, a Giles 202 owned by airshow performer Andrew Wright, crashed in a wooded area. Reports did not immediately confirm the pilot was Wright, who has flown the Giles since 2001, according […]

AOPA’s Air Safety Institute released its 24th annual Joseph T. Nall Report (PDF) this week, including for the first time a review of helicopter accident causes. Overall, accident rates for non-commercial fixed-wing aircraft climbed from 6.30 per 100,000 hours in 2010 to 6.54 in 2012 due to flight time decreasing while accident counts remained level […]

I don’t know if you bothered to click on the video linkfor yesterday’s coverage of NASA’s crash work on ELT performance. It’s worth watching. But the part I’m most interested in occurs at 1:47. I’ve taken the liberty of re-editing the video and placing it in a viewer here. Note how ineffective the single shoulder […]

Concerns about pilot aging are just as important for the younger pilot as for the more silver-haired among us. The US population is getting greyer, and it’s plain to see when looking around any airport, so too is the average pilot. This aging brings numerous challenges and a few rewards that should be important to […]

NASA’s orchestrated crash of a Cessna 172 on Wednesday, the last in a series of impact tests, completed the data-gathering phase of research aimed at improving the performance of ELTs. The agency’s Search and Rescue Mission Office completed the last of the three drops from NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia to simulate severe but […]