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.

Firefighting Floatplane Crashes In Montana, Pilot Killed

An amphibious-float-equipped firefighting aircraft crashed Wednesday (July 10) afternoon, killing the pilot. According to sheriff’s office reports from Lewis and Clark County, the Air Tractor AT-802 FireBoss hit a mountainside and crashed into Hauser Lake while fighting a fire at Horse Gulch northeast of Helena, Montana. The county sheriff, Leo Dutton, told local news outlets […]

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First Solo Ends With Stall/Spin At 45 Feet

Canada’s Transportation Safety Board says a pilot’s first solo ended in disaster at Quebec City’s Jean Lesage International Airport, but it didn’t specify a cause for the crash. The student was seriously injured but survived. The board highlighted all the precautions that flight schools and instructors should observe before sending a new pilot aloft for […]

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FAA Greenlights New Las Vegas Area Airport

Plans to break ground on a new Las Vegas airport are progressing following the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA’s) recent approval of the project. Las Vegas Executive Airport will be located some 30 miles southwest of Harry Reid International Airport and will accommodate single-engine, multi-engine and rotorcraft operations. Clark County Commissioners unanimously approved runway construction for […]

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Restoration Couple Killed In Vintage Waco Crash

The well-known husband-and-wife aircraft restoration team of Dave and Jeanne Allen died in the crash of their pristine 1934 Waco YKC in a Kansas field last week. No witnesses to the crash have come forward so the FAA is saying the plane crashed under “unknown circumstances.” The Allens lived in Elbert, Colorado, and it’s not […]

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NTSB Describes Split S Preceding Bill Anders’ Fatal Crash

An NTSB Preliminary Report suggests former astronaut Bill Anders was doing a Split S in his Beech A45 Mentor but ran out of altitude and crashed into the ocean off Deer Harbor, Washington, on June 7. The NTSB does not use that term, but its narrative of cellphone video of the 90-year-old Anders’ final moments […]

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Malibu Crash Kills Five Family Members

Five members of a Georgia family, including two children, died in the crash of their Piper PA-46 Malibu in upstate New York on Sunday. The aircraft was headed from Oneonta, New York, to Atlanta with a fuel stop in West Virginia when it went down in a rural area in Delaware County just after 2 […]

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2022 Miami Bridge Crash Report Reveals Unlikely Probable Cause

In a tragic case that demonstrates that carburetor icing is not limited to cold-weather or high-altitude operations, the National Transportation Safety Board’s (NTSB’s) final report on the May 14, 2022 fatal Cessna 172 accident on a bridge in Miami concludes that carburetor ice was the probable cause. The pilot, who was also an air traffic […]

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NTSB Sanctions Boeing For ‘Blatantly’ Violating Terms Of Agreement

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) issued a statement this morning sanctioning Boeing for “blatantly” violating investigative regulations it agreed to as a party in the probe of the door-plug blowout in Portland, Oregon. The NTSB cited a Boeing media briefing on June 25 in which the manufacturer “provided non-public investigative information to the news […]

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