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.
The FAA’s air traffic control system is at “increased and unnecessary risk” from cyber-attacks and other threats, according to a government report released this week. The analysis by the Government Accountability Office found weaknesses in controlling access to computer systems, encrypting sensitive data, and implementing security programs. For example, the auditors found the agency’s information […]
I suppose it has ever been thus, but these days, we’re all appreciative and always looking for someone to wear the mantle of hero. That more than anything explains why that video of the incapacitated skydiver being saved by his instructor went viral over the weekend. I saw it on NBC news Sunday night as […]
It was almost a year ago, on March 8, 2014, that flight MH370 vanished from radar en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. As the anniversary approaches, Australia, Indonesia, and Malaysia are preparing to try out a new way to track airplanes that would use current technology but would enable the system to track a […]
About 20 years ago, I was flying on a cloudy Saturday morning southwest of Austin, Texas. I was monitoring Austin approach when I heard a conversation from a plane inbound to Austin asking if they were in radar contact. Approach asked if they were the plane ten miles west of Comfort, Texas on a heading […]
EAA has been a strong advocate for changing the FAA’s medical rules that apply to private pilots, and last week the effort moved in a new direction as a new Pilot’s Bill of Rights was introduced in Congress. EAA chairman Jack Pelton talks with AVweb’s Mary Grady about his take on the bill and what […]
An Australian skydiver was likely saved by a fellow jumper who pulled his ripcord for him after he suffered an apparent seizure during freefall. In dramatic (really) video from the helmet cam of his instructor Sheldon McFarlane, a student skydiver identified only as Christopher at first seemed fine as he fell from 12,000 feet over […]
Certainly the disappearance of Malaysian Flight 370 can be classified as the greatest mystery since Amelia Earhart. But after numerous conversations with airline colleagues, aviation friends, neighbors, workout buddies and bartenders, I’ve uncovered another mystery. Despite scientific evidence that proves otherwise, many of these educated people are emphatic in their belief that a 650,000-pound airplane […]
A California jury has awarded $13,360,000 to the family of a Napa doctor who died in the crash of his Cessna 182 in 2009, citing negligence and false representation on the part of the mechanic who had signed out the aircraft’s annual inspection days before the crash. The jury found that mechanic Faride Khalaf had […]
Imagine a Piper J-3 Cub parked beside a mighty double-decker Airbus A380. The two airplanes couldn’t be more different, yet both function on the same four principles: thrust, drag, lift, and weight. The 1.2 million pound Airbus just scales them up a thousand times over the 1,200-pound Piper. Each aircraft is designed for its purpose. […]
Investigators are focusing on whether the wrong type of fuel led to a Piper Malibu Mirage crash Sunday in Spokane, Washington, killing the pilot. The airplane had engine trouble shortly after departing Felts Field and crashed on a street in East Spokane. KREM2 reported that the state Department of Ecology and an FAA inspector raised […]
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