Flight Safety

AVweb’s Flight Safety section offers in-depth coverage of aviation safety topics, including accident analyses, risk management strategies, regulatory updates, and pilot training insights. Designed for pilots, instructors, and aviation professionals, this section provides timely information to enhance situational awareness and promote best practices in flight operations.

Seaplane Pilots Rescue Ditched Pilot

Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than it is to be good but the pilot of an aircraft that ditched off Key Largo, Fla., on Thursday seemed to have everything working in his favor. According to a news release, the unidentified pilot’s distress calls were heard by Key West Seaplanes pilots Julie Ann Floyd and […]

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Boeing Named In Asiana Suits

A total of nine passengers aboard Asiana Flight 214 that crash-landed in San Francisco on July 6 are suing the airline for damages, but they’re also going after Boeing, claiming the company sells aircraft with different classes of safety. As expected, the suit says Asiana’s crew was negligent when the Boeing 777 they were flying […]

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Commander Crashed Inverted In New Haven

The Rockwell Turbo Commander 690B that crashed into two houses in New Haven, Conn., on Friday was inverted when it hit the homes, the NTSB says. But spokesman Patrick Murray told Reuters the pilot, retired Microsoft vice president Bill Henningsgaard, did not make any distress calls as he turned the aircraft to land in rainy […]

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Disney’s Planes: Good, Clean Fun

On Interstate 4, southwest of Orlando, is a conspicuous power pole consisting of one large circle topped by two smaller ones, the lines tacked to their arcs. Its a major power feed into Orlandos Disney World. And the fact that theres not a four-year-old alive whod miss the reference to Mickey Mouse makes it a […]

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Deer Trail’s Drone Hunt Vote

The town of Deer Trail, Colo., Tuesday held a vote on a local ordinance that could financially encourage residents to shoot down UAVs operated over their land by the federal government, but the vote was inconclusive in spite of warnings from the FAA. The ordinance was drafted by a town resident and it would offer […]

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Sikorsky At Work On Smart UAV

Sikorsky hopes its newly unveiled Matrix technology suite can bring higher autonomy to unmanned aviation missions, actively guiding aircraft through dynamically evolving situations that could be dangerous for pilots or impossible for a normal UAV to negotiate. The company describes Matrix as advanced algorithms that collect situational data and effectively make decisions, literally on the […]

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Da Vinci Codex On Flight At Smithsonian

A notebook dating back to roughly 1505, filled by Leonardo da Vinci, with his ideas and sketches regarding bird and mechanical flight, will be on display at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum next month. The book is called the “Codex on the Flight of Birds” and it will be digitized, allowing visitors to […]

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Transport Canada, Safety Board Divided On Post-Crash Fires

Public comments from each agency suggest that Canada’s Transportation Safety Board and Transport Canada may be divided regarding how each would prefer to address the issue of post-crash fires, and those differences have sparked some finger pointing. The Safety Board recently released a report probing an October 2011 crash in which the two pilots of […]

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Podcast: GA Safety Rate Fails to Improve

The NTSB this week released its latest safety statistics, and the rate for general aviation aircraft showed little improvement. Earl Weener of the NTSB, who is himself an active GA pilot, has been working to help focus FAA efforts toward reducing GA accidents, and he’s hopeful that programs now underway will have substantial effects over […]

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Researchers See Clear Air Turbulence

German researchers have developed a system that uses lasers mounted on aircraft to “see” clear air turbulence ahead of the plane. At the German Aerospace Center DLR Institute of Atmospheric physics, researchers have designed a light detection and ranging (LIDAR) instrument for that purpose. It sends a beam of short-wave ultraviolet laser radiation into the […]

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