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.

CEO of the Cockpit #47: Pilots Have Never Changed

Flying airliners has changed quite a bit during the past 50 years but the pilots have remained the same.They always appear to be dependable, clean-cut and boringly similar on their surfaces, but they possess traits that the flying public doesn’t detect.These personality traits aren’t just limited to airline pilots, although with the amount of time […]

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Inside the Chart Factory

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared in Twin & Turbine, Jan. 2005, and is reprinted here by permission. You know all those little cubbyholes at the pilot shop where you find Jeppesen aeronautical charts? Imagine a factory filled with thousands of them. Aisle after aisle of cubbies filled with charts stacked six feet high. You […]

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Say Again? #52: Changing Culture

It’s time for us to have a heart-to-heart talk again, folks. Time is short. This is the last summer we’re going to have before the really big retirement wave of controllers start. That would be in January of 2006 if you want my opinion. It’s already started, of course. It isn’t going to hit all […]

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From The CFI #8: Musings of an Old CFI

If you’ve read my previous columns, you know that I have advocated changing the way we train new pilots. The old, maneuvers-based training is no longer meeting the challenge of today’s technically advanced aircraft and the evolving national airspace system. We’ve got to spend more time teaching folks to make good, solid judgments and to […]

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CEO of the Cockpit #46: Sidelined From Summer Sub-Sonic Fun

Every pilot will tell you that summer flying is very different from aviating in the winter months. Wasps in the pitot tubes are absent in January. There are no chunks of airframe ice keeping your stabilizer from working during July; and in the Northern Hemisphere, your gloves will never freeze to a jetway as you […]

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Say Again? #51: Lost Communications — NORDO — Part 2

If you’ll remember, last month I left you hanging over the Snowbird VOR, in the clouds, with no radio communication. This month’s task is to get back on the ground. Let’s review.Here’s the flight plan we filed: N12345C172/A110 kts.Dep. KHKY (Hickory, N.C.) 6,000 feetHKY..BZM.V20.SUG.V185.SOT.V136.VXV..TYSArr. KTYS (Knoxville, Tenn.) And here is a low-altitude en route chart […]

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NATCA Responds to the FAA

Good afternoon everyone and thanks for joining this call. AsDoug mentioned, my name is John Carr, President of the National AirTraffic Controllers Association. And just to clarify, although the FAA [news conference] event happened probably was an hour or two ago, we just got our hands on the [FAA] report [on the New York TRACON] […]

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