Flight Safety

AVweb’s Flight Safety section offers in-depth coverage of aviation safety topics, including accident analyses, risk management strategies, regulatory updates, and pilot training insights. Designed for pilots, instructors, and aviation professionals, this section provides timely information to enhance situational awareness and promote best practices in flight operations.

FAA Completes Alaska Weather Camera Network

The FAA’s Alaska Weather Camera Program is now fully deployed, the FAA said recently, with 221 cameras at remote sites to help pilots determine when and where it’s safe to fly. The system improves safety and efficiency by providing pilots with near-real-time, visual weather information, says the FAA. The system includes an interactive online map […]

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New Zealand Clears R44s For Flight

Robinson R-44 helicopters have been cleared to fly again in New Zealand after investigators there concluded that a rotor blade broke because of a crash and its failure didn’t cause the crash. Last Saturday, New Zealand grounded R-44s with Dash 7 rotor blades after preliminary inspection of the wreckage from a crash near Queenstown last […]

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Pilots Blamed For Bahamas Learjet Crash

“Poor decision-making by the crew” was the probable cause of a fatal Learjet accident last November at Grand Bahama International Airport, according to the Bahamas’ aircraft accident investigation unit. Both crew members and seven passengers died after the jet struck a crane at about 220 feet ASL, about 3.2 nm from the runway threshold. The […]

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NTSB, AOPA Disagree With FAA Cylinder AD

The FAA last month proposed a revision to its Airworthiness Directive regarding ECi cylinders, but the NTSB and AOPA have objected to several of the proposal’s key components. In comments posted to the docket (PDF), the safety board says the proposal affects “many more cylinder assemblies” than it should, and also removes repetitive inspection requirements […]

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Cub vs. Champ: Which to Pick?

When Elaine Kauh and I were shooting the Cub vs. Champ shoot-out video (scroll to the bottom of this page), it was the first time I’d ever flown these two vintage taildraggers back-to-back in any kind of organized way. I’d flown the Cub plenty and the Champ a little less often, but with months or […]

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Short Final

Years ago, we were approaching Cleveland on a clear Sunday afternoon. Accompanied by nearly unbearable static, we heard an obviously nervous light plane pilot trying to tell Hopkins tower where he was, how high he was, and what he wanted to do. When he finally (and mercifully) finished, the tower calmly replied with a clearance […]

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Student Landed F-16 With Half A Wing

An Oklahoma Air National Guard student pilot managed to bring an F-16 safely back to his base missing half of the right wing after a midair collision with his instructor over Kansas last October. The Air Force released photos of the aftermath of the encounter in which the unnamed student’s outboard missile severed his instructor’s […]

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Your Flight Review – From Surviving to Thriving

It’s a fact of aeronautical life that virtually every pilot has to complete some form of recurrent training every two years to fly as pilot in command in Part 91 operations. While FAR Part 61.56 outlines a number of methods of meeting its mandate, another fact of aeronautical life is that most pilots comply by […]

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Australia, New Zealand Ground Some R-44s

Aviation authorities in New Zealand and Australia have grounded a significant number of Robinson R-44 helicopters in response to a fatal crash in New Zealand last week. The affected aircraft have main rotor blades with the part number CO16-7. The groundings affect 80 aircraft (of 184) in New Zealand and an unknown number of the […]

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Air Force Releases Report On F-16 Collision

The Air Force on Friday released its investigation (PDF) of a midair collision of two F-16s in Kansas last fall, citing a student pilot’s loss of visual contact and an instructor’s misperception of a turning maneuver. The two F-16Cs, from the Tulsa Air National Guard Base, were flying a training exercise with a third fighter […]

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