Flight Safety

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 […]

The Pilot’s Bill of Rights 2, which would broaden third-class medical exemptions and expand legal rights, began its journey through the legislative assembly line this week as GA Caucus members in the U.S. Senate and House introduced companion bills. Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., introduced S. 571 as an expansion of his legislation that was signed […]

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 […]

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 […]

“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 […]

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 […]

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 […]