Flight Safety

Six test sites have been selected by the FAA for working toward the integration of unmanned aerial systems into the national airspace. The six sites “achieve cross-country geographic and climatic diversity and help the FAA meet its UAS research needs,” the agency said on Monday. The sites, in Alaska, Nevada, North Dakota, Texas, New York, […]

This afternoon, my six-year-old son and I went out to the airport to check on things at the hangar. The weather was rainy and IMC. We watched a Cherokee land after shooting an instrument approach. I made some comment about being able to fly instruments soon, when I finish my instrument rating. My son turned […]

Remember the movie, Wall-E, a Pixar animated tale whose subtext was that technology eventually evolved to be so all enveloping that humans were reduced to quivering mounds of fat conveyed in bins attached to a mechanical belt? If that future awaits us all, are airline pilots leading the way? In the midst of its investigation […]

The Super Bowl is always a big event for general aviation operations, and this year, with the game set for Feb. 2 at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, weather could potentially become a major factor. The FAA said it expects an additional 1,200 GA flights to the New York/New Jersey metro airports during Super Bowl […]

It used to be self-fueling just referred to the aircraft owner who brought mogas to her airplane in five-gallon cans and upset the airport manager or FBO because of lost fuel sales. While thats still the case, over the last decade, its also come to mean putting avgas into your airplane from a self-service pump. […]

The FAA and NORAD both are doing their part to keep an eye on Santa’s Christmas deliveries this week. NORAD’s site features games, movies, music, and of course, on Christmas Eve, live tracking of Santa’s route around the globe. The FAA is promoting NextGen at its Christmas site, saying the system “helps Santa deliver presents […]

For the round-the-world flight planned for Solar Impulse in 2015, a solo pilot will have to fly legs of up to 72 hours, so last week the team staged a simulation at their base in Switzerland. Bertrand Piccard, the leader of the nonprofit group and one of the two pilots for the solar-powered electric airplane, […]

First night XC with instructor. The route was going to take us over my home at 11:00pm, so I turned on my aviation scanner in my home for my wife so I could tell her goodnight. As we passed over my home at 6,500′, I had failed to push the flip-flop to the air-to-air frequency […]

Mozambique authorities say the captain of a Mozambique Airlines Embraer E-190 deliberately crashed the plane in Namibia last month killing all 33 people on board. As we reported in November, the aircraft, the newest in the airline’s fleet, went down in heavy rain on a flight to Angola. According to the BBC, Joao Abreu, head […]

A British Airways Boeing 747 destroyed part of a building along with the travel plans of its 189 passengers on Sunday when the aircraft’s right wing sliced the top off much of the brick structure next to a taxiway at Tambo Airport in Johannesburg, South Africa. The airline has confirmed the incident but is not […]