Flight Safety

I dont know whether to be shocked, surprised or skeptical of this weeks reports that Customs and Border Protection is re-examining its policies toward stop-and-search of private aircraft. For now, I think Ill go with skeptical. The reasons are several, chief among them being that CBP is a giant, complex and largely opaque bureaucracy of […]

The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. – Bertrand Russell That which is legal is not always safe, and that which is safe is not always legal. – John Deakin These two quotes are most appropriate when talking about traffic pattern entries. What IS […]

As spring moves towards summer our weekly review of what’s going on in aviation on SocialFlight reveals more and more events, especially pure, grassroots, small airport fly-ins. The first one we ran across, right in the heart of the country, is in Central City, Neb., where there will be a fly-in breakfast and lunch, on […]

Federal border security agents have sharply reduced intercepts of general aviation aircraft, following complaints by pilots that excessive police action at small airports is restricting the freedom to fly and a meeting with AOPA President Mark Baker according to a report by National Public Radio. An official with U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Office of […]

The Malaysian government has released satellite data that was used to determine that Flight MH370 went down in the southern Indian Ocean but critics say it might not be of much use. The 47 pages of calculations from the log of an Inmarsat satellite that received signals from the 777 were released in PDF form, […]

I was holding short of runway 9L waiting for an arriving jet to clear the runway. As he was clearing, he asked:“What’s ground control?” The tower answered:“They are the people you talk to when you want to drive around on the airport.” [slight pause] “I always wanted to say that!” The jet pilot replied:“You just […]

I spent a busy Saturday at the H.L. Sonny Callahan Airport in Alabama, otherwise known as Fairhope. Thats where Continental Motors has its factory and customer support facility and where it does engine overhauls and mods. Its a nice little airport right by the lower reaches of Mobile Bay. Continental was holding the first of […]

On Saturday, May 24, 2014, Continental Motors held its first Learn to Fly Day at its Fairhope, Alabama facility. AVweb attended the event and shot this brief news video. Learn more about the event on the AVweb Insider blog. view on YouTube

Several years ago, I bought my husband a ride in a glider as a gift, and I latched on to the idea of learning to soar. I had read and heard about how flying gliders could add to the safety of flying an airplane, not only as a result of the skills and judgment learned […]

A couple of United Airlines A320s departing Houston’s George Bush Airport came close enough together on May 9 that a controller in another facility called the mishap “gnarly.” The FAA is classifying the incident as a “near miss” (it only uses “near collision” if the aircraft come within 500 feet of one another). Whatever the […]