Flight Safety

At the risk of being mistaken, at least momentarily, for some doe-eyed Pollyanna, today’s blog will depart from the usual gloom for a brief bout of unabashed aviation boosterism. No, it’s not the Xanax kicking in, just soaring inspiration from seeing how much enthusiasm and creative vitality some people bring to general aviation through the […]

Only a small percentage of the controller work force in the system today-or for that matter, in the past-are or have been pilots. Controllers are taught to perform the duties and provide the services that are outlined in the controller’s bible, the FAA Order 7110.65, Air Traffic Control Manual. While they have been made aware […]

There was plenty of weather along the route of AirAsia Flight QZ8501 early Sunday but nothing airlines that ply the busy air corridors over the Java Sea don’t regularly cope with. Weather officials said lightning strikes were recorded in the same area and at the same time the A320 with 162 people on board “lost […]

Much like the FAA’s Christmas-week safety campaign for those who received unmanned aerial vehicles as gifts, The UK’s aviation regulators sent the message (PDF) to consumers that disruptive or unsafe use of drones could result in hefty fines. The Daily Mail of London reported on Christmas Day that the Civil Aviation Authority said drone users […]

Monday must have been one of those schizophrenic days that only a federal agency could suffer. Just as The Washington Post broke a story that the FAA had hired its own lobbyist to suggest ways of speeding up the drone flight approval process against warnings by its own safety inspectors, it was participating in the […]

Several years ago, I was flying from John Wayne (KSNA) to Big Bear (L35) on a route that crossed that of arriving traffic into Ontario (KONT). It was the anniversary of the Wright Brothers’ first flight, well into the holiday gift-buying season. East of Ontario, SoCal instructed me to alter course 20 degrees to the […]

Four passengers and one crew member were treated for injuries after severe turbulence forced an American Airlines flight to divert while en route to Dallas from Seoul, South Korea, CNN reported this week. The flight landed in Narita, Japan, and those injured were taken to local hospitals, CNN said.American Airlines Flight 280 was a Boeing […]

An experienced pilot will make a better decision about whether to attempt a marginal landing while showing only about half as much brain activity as less experienced pilots, according to a recent study completed by scientists at Stanford University. The research used a flight simulator set up like the cockpit of a single-engine airplane. Eight […]

Anyone who has flown a Beechcraft will have come away impressed with the line’s quality and, especially, the handling qualities. All the way down to the lowly Musketeer, Beech just took pains to get the airplane’s handling qualities a cut above everything else, and that applies in spades to the Baron series. Even so, every […]

I’ve been doing some work on the Cub so I’ve been driving back and forth to the airport a couple of times a day. Inbound this morning, I was about to duck into a gas station and had second thoughts. The posted price was $2.43. Sure enough, when I drove home-five hours later-it was $2.38. […]