Flight Safety

In this week’s Cub Theatre installment, AVweb’s Paul Bertorelli provides a video examination of the runway turnback or the so-called “impossible turn.” Well, it’s not impossible at all, although it’s not necessarily easy. If you want to try it, you’ll need to practice it first. And think about making the turnback decision before you take […]

The pilot of a Challenger 600 that crashed in Aspen, Colo., on early Sunday afternoon aborted his first landing attempt due to a severe tailwind according to air traffic control exchanges obtained from LiveATC.net. The pilot managed to go missed but the aircraft crashed on the runway on the second attempt, killing at least one […]

A Piper Cherokee and Cirrus SR-22 both ended their flights on public roads on Saturday and both had a happy result. By far the most high-profile off-airport landing was that of Michael Schwartz’s Piper Cherokee, which encountered some kind of problem over the Bronx after a sightseeing flight around the Statue of Liberty and was […]

Thanks to radio traffic recorded by LiveATC.net, we know that winds may have been a factor in the crash of a Challenger 600 at Aspen on Sunday. AVweb’s Russ Niles prepared this report. Duration: File Size: download here

The fight over Santa Monica Airport heated up on Jan. 3, 2014, as a federal judge denied the FAAs request for an extension of time to respond to the lawsuit filed by the City in November seeking to close the airport. Citing what he referred to as the time-sensitive nature of the action, Judge John […]

Accidents, like elections, have consequences. And as youve probably read, a consequence of one accident is that the ATP will soon rise to the level of unobtanium, so if you always wanted one, 2014 is the time to act. And better be quick about it. The accident, of course, is the Colgan Air crash in […]

The NTSB has issued its five newest Safety Alerts aimed to help pilots develop mitigating strategies to prevent accidents. These follow five issued in March that focused on the most frequent type of general aviation accidents. Knowing these accidents can be prevented is why General Aviation Safety is on our Most Wanted List of transportation […]

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 […]