Flight Safety

Indonesian government officials say divers have located the cockpit voice and flight data recorders from AirAsia Flight 8501 but they are trapped under wreckage and haven’t been retrieved. Searchers hoped to shift the wreckage enough to get at the recorders Monday. The recorders will likely have clues, if not outright answers, to the questions that […]

A Lancair crashed in a busy Los Angeles intersection near Van Nuys Airport Friday afternoon, killing the 47-year-old pilot, identified as Alberto Behar, a flight instructor and scientist with connections to NASA, the Los Angeles Times reported. Behar was the only one on board when it crashed about 1:14 p.m. shortly after takeoff. No other […]

Peace and quiet is something that every parent has longed for at some time or another. A lack of chatter is not so great when in the clouds and rain-being vectored for a parallel ILS approach to a major airport like Atlanta. You instantly miss the constant stream of quick-paced banter of the controller. It […]

Divers have located the empennage section of AirAsia Flight 8501, Indonesia’s search and rescue agency said on Wednesday local time. It’s not yet known if the wreckage found contains the flight data and cockpit voice recorders, which are normally located in the rear of the aircraft. Nor did the agency say whether acoustic equipment had […]

All 13 people aboard a New Zealand skydive plane managed to jump to safety Wednesday after the aircraft had an engine failure. There were six customers going for a tandem jump with six employees of Skydive Taupo when the engine problems developed shortly after takeoff from Taupo Airport. The six customers likely needed little prodding […]

The FAA will announce a final rule today to require all Part 121 airlines to have safety management systems. A safety management system is defined by the FAA as “the formal, top-down, organization-wide approach to managing safety risk and assuring the effectiveness of safety risk controls.” Most major carriers already have their own ways of […]

On New Year’s Day 2014, my friends and I were flying to the CA-AZ RV fly-in at Lake Havasu. While crossing a “cold” MOA that was normally used for air refueling tracks, my RV-10 encountered a RV-6 that continued in the 8 o’clock low position; it was obviously going to the fly-in, but I felt […]

Searchers are waiting for calmer seas to send divers down to what is believed to be the wreckage of AirAsia Flight 5801 in the Java Sea off Borneo. Sonar scans have located five large objects, including one 60 feet long by 18 feet across, that authorities believe is the fuselage of the A320 that went […]

One of the most thankless jobs in aviation has to be that of an FAA Aviation Safety Inspector (ASI). This cadre of experienced aviation professionals has made the choice to work for the government bureaucracy that is the FAA and by doing so, are in many cases the front line for safety in aviation. But […]

In previous installments of this short series (in Kitplanes magazine), we have discussed the importance of planning your first flight thoroughly, and then preparing yourself for the flight-test environment with specific training. Let’s assume then that you have a good plan and have also “warmed up” your flying skills to be ready for the unexpected. […]