Flight Safety

Doing my run-up and getting ready to depart for my first cross-country as a student, the tower instructed me to hold short. Over the radio, in a frantic voice, I heard:“Help me. Help me. I’m a student pilot on my first cross-country, and I’m lost. I’ve been flying around and around, and I don’t know […]

Aireon LLC, a private company based in McLean, Virginia, announced a plan over the weekend to offer global emergency tracking as a public service to the aviation community, free of charge, by 2017. The Aireon Alert service will allow rescue agencies to request the location and last flight track of any 1090 MHz ADS-B equipped […]

The Canadian Transportation Safety Board yesterday released its findingon a 2013 multiple-fatality midair collision between a Cessna 150 and a motor glider with an analysis that said the 150 pilot was probably wearing a baseball cap that affected his ability to see the glider. While only one of several factors mentioned regarding visibility, including relative […]

An engine failure and a proliferation of cellphones resulted in the dramatic and well-covered return of a JetBlue flight to Long Beach Thursday morning. Flight 1416 was reportedly 25 minutes into the flight to Austin when alarms went off in the cockpit and smoke filled the cabin. The oxygen masks were deployed and there was […]

It hasn’t been a quiet week in aviation news-our survey uncovered certification testing of the Falcon 7X at the world’s highest airport, SAFE Teacher Grant Awards, a big sale of Embraer E175 jets and a company that’s developing a way to surf behind an airplane. The long-range Falcon 7X will soon become the first business […]

Seemingly for generations pilots have argued over which controls speed and which controls altitude: power or pitch. At varying times the FAA contributed support to both sides with publications outlining flying techniques and training information. The very existence of the arguably adolescent-level debates ignores the hard reality: In powered aircraft neither one works alone. To […]

The number of civil aviation accidents fell last year, from 1,539 in 2012 to 1,297 in 2013, the NTSB said on Monday. General aviation accidents showed a decrease in all categories. The total number of GA accidents was 1,222, a decrease of 249 from 2013. The number of fatal accidents (221), fatalities (387), and the […]

While traversing New York/Washington Center air space, we received a frequency change. However, when trying to check in, the frequency was congested with multiple aircraft being worked. This went on for a while. Finally there was a break, and the PM was able to check in:“Good afternoon, New York. NXXXXX — long-time listener, first-time caller; […]

Lockheed Martin Flight Services is introducing a variety of new features that make use of satellite datalink, including a new electronic PIREP and search-and-rescue capability that uses the Iridium communications network. In this video, Aviation Consumer‘s Larry Anglisano gets a tour of the new features from Lockheed’s Jim Derr while at AirVenture 2014 in Oshkosh, […]

Letter of the Week:Buy a Good Pulse Oximeter I am 85 years old and have a lung condition. I had a pulse oximeter for years, and it normally indicated a saturation level of around 92 to 94 percent. It was one of the American-made units and cost about $150. Eventually it quit, and when I […]