Flight Safety

An extensive report on general aviation safety in USA Today this week doesn’t convey the whole story, says GAMA President Pete Bunce. He took a break from his work in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday to talk with AVweb’s Mary Grady about ongoing efforts to build safer airplanes. Duration: 8:47 File Size: 8.0 MB download here

Our weekly review of SocialFlight found everything from a fly-in at an Intergalactic Spaceport, through a run-what-you-brung air race, the annual Waco Club’s fly-in and a kid’s candy drop. The Second Community Spaceport Day will be held at the Greater Green River Intergalactic Spaceport, Green River, Wyo., on Saturday, June 21 from 8:00 a.m. to […]

General aviation advocacy groups were quick to respond today to an extensive report in Wednesday’s USA Today, “Unfit for flight,” which is critical of GA safety.AOPA called the article “deeply flawed,” and said AOPA staffers had spoken to reporter Thomas Frank for an hour last week, but the article doesn’t mention AOPA’s contention that GA […]

A USA Today story titled “Unfit For Flight” on the safety record of general aviation aircraft has painted a picture of government and industry inaction and coverup on what its author Thomas Frank calls “a massive and growing death toll from small aircraft crashes.” The extensive article, which appears in the June 18 paper and […]

Three Midwestern universities are asking pilots to help them solve the riddle of why VFR pilots press on in IMC conditions despite the wealth of weather tools available in the flight planning room and in the cockpit. As part of the Partnership to Enhance General Aviation Accessibility and Sustainability (PEGASAS) Center of Excellence for General […]

The FAA’s efforts in recent years to collect and share industry data has benefitted airline safety, the agency says, and on Tuesday, the European Aviation Safety Agency took steps to work with the FAA to expand those programs globally. At a joint safety conference held in Washington, D.C., EASA chief Patrick Ky said his agency […]

An incident last week in which a controller told a Delta pilot to abort a landing at Atlanta Hartsfield Airport and later said he was “kidding” was “completely inappropriate and unacceptable,” NATCA spokesman Doug Church told AVweb on Monday. “This incident never should have happened,” Church said. “NATCA takes very seriously its shared commitment with […]

This was one of those days when everyone was getting a bad ride and trying to find a smooth altitude. Everyone was bugging ATC about the ride. As we were coming north off the coast of Florida on our way back to JFK from Montego Bay, a Cactus flight came on and, after complaining about […]

The FAA is looking into an incident at Atlanta Hartsfield Airport last Wednesday after a Delta pilot was told a controller was “kidding” about an order to abort a landing. The FAA’s Kathleen Bergen told ABC News Flight 630, a Boeing 777 from Detroit, was on final for ATL when a controller told the crew […]

Pilots who live in Florida, and especially on the west coast of Florida, have this problem. Its called the Gulf of Mexico. Nice beaches and all, and warm for nine months a year, but if youre going anywhere west of about 85 degrees longitude, youll have the argument with yourself about cutting the corner across […]