Flight Safety

The Bower family of Gualala, California would like nothing better than to keep their private, public-use airport open – but since they don’t fly themselves, they’re hoping those with some skin in the game will pay the $60,000 necessary for repairs. AVweb’s Russ Niles spoke with Julie Bower about the unique situation in a remote […]

Letter of the Week:The Rest of the Story The new rest rules do not cover cargo flights, nor do they cover foreign flights in U.S. airspace. But the basics should be that professional pilots take care of their bodies, including getting adequate rest. Carriers give crew regulated rest periods, but unless the FAA wants the […]

Authorities in Abu Dhabi detained 12 people but didn’t file any charges after five separate fires were deliberately set aboard an Etihad flight from Melbourne, Australia. Distraught passengers reported smoke and flame pouring from bathrooms on the Boeing 777 ER at various times during the flight, which included a two-hour diversion to Jakarta. A comprehensive […]

Bucking the downward trend of general aviation, the U.S. Parachute Association (USPA) is reporting record-high membership for the second consecutive year. With roughly 3.2 million skydives made last year in the U.S., it announced that more and more people are taking not only a first leap but continuing to pursue skydiving as a hobby and […]

The one-day NTSB investigative hearing into the Aug. 14, 2013 crash of a UPS jet on approach to the Birmingham-Shuttlesworth (Alabama) Airport included evidence that the flight crew was fatigued, and that the captain had said the schedules were “killing him” and he “couldn’t keep this up.” According to the San Francisco Chronicle, documents and […]

You are on approach in busy airspace with an even busier cockpit…you are changing frequencies, receiving vectors, looking for traffic. You are well into the descent phase. As you flip through your kneeboard to get ready for the final phases of flight, you instinc- tively start looking for the runway. You see one in front […]

Women Can Fly, a series of four special Saturday events scheduled for May and June of 2014, will introduce aviation to more girls and women in the state of Virginia. Each is planned to be an enjoyable and educational event for girls and women to learn more about flight through a variety of experiences including […]

A Beechcraft King Air B100 twin-engine turboprop crashed about 9 a.m. Wednesday morning while attempting to land at Pearland Regional Airport near Houston, Texas. The airplane burned on impact and was destroyed. The pilot was 39-year-old Joe Frank Lassiter III of Mountain Brook, Ala., according to the Texas Department of Public Safety. The pilot had […]

The FAA is casting a wide net to find candidates for thousands of air traffic controller jobs — and in doing so, it’s trying some new strategies, which has caused distress among some who were on track to qualify under the old strategies. Students enrolled in any of the FAA-approved Collegiate Training Initiative programs at […]

Call me a glutton for punishment, but Ive logged more than 4000 hours as a civilian primary flight instructor. Ive worked in both Part 61 and 141 schools and owned and operated one in the frozen tundra of eastern Michigan. Currently Im an instructor at a 142 school, which means I train pilots to go […]