Flight Safety

Officials have called off the search for a California man now presumed lost after he apparently lost consciousness in his Lancair Evolution and crashed in the Pacific, about 460 miles west of San Francisco. Troy Johnson, 39, was on a flight from Phoenix to Hesperia, California, with what might have been a fuel stop in […]

In spring 2003, I was halfway through my flight training. My instructor and I were chatting about air traffic control. He’d just visited the local TRACON. From his description, I pictured a dark room filled with the intense chatter of men and women half-lit by radar scopes and blinking sci-fi lights. A few short years […]

A Cessna 182 that crashed in Washington state Thursday killed two people on board and sparked a wildfire that forced hundreds of residents to evacuate. Firefighters responding to the wildfire discovered the wreckage with a body inside, and NTSB investigators called to the scene found a second body Friday, The Associated Press reported. Local law […]

Pilot reportsof unmanned aerial systems have topped 650 so far this year – well over the 238 reported for all of 2014, the FAA said this week. The agency said there was a big jump in sightings this summer, with 138 pilot reports in June and 137 in July. Meanwhile, there were just 52 reports […]

Almost 15 years ago a well-known professional golfer named Payne Stewart was a passenger in a Lear 35 that departed Orlando, Florida for Dallas, Texas. The departure was unremarkable. Three minutes after the last communications with the Lear it made a turn consistent with a human input, but just three minutes later ATC was unable […]

Violent storms in Chandler, Arizona, late Tuesday flipped over airplanes at the Chandler Municipal Airport, scattering them about the field and damaging an estimated 30 aircraft in all. Photos and video at KCHD showed GA airplanes, mostly light singles recognizable by their wings and tails, sitting askew or lying belly-up around the tiedown area. Chandler […]

NASA – which always has a cool setup at Oshkosh, space suits and all – quietly conducted research last month under the radar of the world’s biggest airshow. In the basement of EAA’s Air Academy Lodge, a team of NASA staffers had pilots fly an X-Plane sim to test a cellphone app designed to avoid […]

With the FAA and the aviation community facing increasing pressure to find a way to keep UAS and airplanes separate, a group of four engineering students from the University of Rhode Island have proposed a solution. Their project, which took first place in an FAA design competition, proposes installing a solar-powered drone detection and tracking […]

The erratic work schedules of air traffic controllers often cause chronic fatigue, endangering the system’s safety, according to a 2011 NASA report that The Associated Press saysthe FAA “kept secret for years.” The FAA now has posted the report online (PDF), hours after the AP posted its story.Controllers participating in the study wore a wrist […]

When I was a controller in south Texas, a Piper Tripacer called me in the tower asking to transition through the airspace. Me:“Piper 123, squawk 4352.” Tripacer:“What’s that, tower?” Me:“Piper 123, squawk 4352.” Tripacer:“Tower, I don’t understand you.” Me:“Piper 123, your transponder code: 4352. Do you have a transponder on board?” Tripacer:“No, just me and […]