Risk Management

The European Business Aviation Convention and Exhibition (EBACE) has been cancelled for 2020 and exhibitors and attendees will be getting full refunds. The show, sponsored by the European Business Aviation Association and the National Business Aviation Association, was scheduled for May 26-28 in Geneva but the uncertainty surrounding the staging of such events, recent actions […]

To the owner of an Experimental Amateur-Built (E/A-B) aircraft, any accident is a tragedy. However, the FAA monitors the homebuilt accident rate based on fatal accidents only. It’s understandable, in some ways. Unlike owners of production aircraft, builders of homebuilt aircraft are usually very familiar with disassembling and transporting a bent bird. A minor enough […]

Charter operators are reporting a major bump in interest thanks to the spread of COVID-19 as those who can afford it avoid the aerial petri dishes of hub and spoke travel. Fortune is reporting that business aircraft operators have seen a major uptick in interest and business in the last couple of weeks as those […]

Most of my articles for Aviation Safety focus on managing the risk of flying piston-powered general aviation aircraft, with examples of good and poor risk management. But risk management is at least equally critical in the world of operating airliners and turbine-powered transport category aircraft. Recent air carrier accidents provide illustration and lessons relevant to […]

Liquids have been banned from certain areas of the cockpits of A350 airliners after a couple of diversions caused by spills on the center panels. The European Aviation Safety Agency has issued an emergency AD banning liquids from areas of the cockpit where spillage might muck up the electronic works of the state-of-the-art aircraft since […]

Thunderstorms are the nemesis of general aviation. We can’t penetrate them nor fly over them. Fortunately, we have several sophisticated tools at our disposal to help in the preflight planning to make that all important go/no go decision before we head into the murk. Their sophistication is remarkable, and we need to choose those that […]

Pilots are taught to take off and land into the wind, and avoid landing or departing with a tailwind. There is a reason: The performance penalty of a tailwind is much greater than the benefit of a headwind. How big a penalty? Go to your POH and calculate it. The most common figure is to […]

Passengers aboard an Air Canada Jazz flight from Montreal on Friday watched as one of the wheels fell off as it lifted off from Trudeau International Airport. At least one passenger caught the unusual event on his cellphone and it made for a good story on social media. Our friends at Flyer Magazine in the […]

The earth’s surface is about 71 percent water. Most of us will never pilot a personal aircraft long distances over oceans, but eventually flying over some body of water while beyond gliding distance to land is almost a certainty. When we do that in a single-engine aircraft, the adverse consequences of an engine failure increase […]

After dropping steadily for most of the past two decades, the helicopter accident and fatal accident rates have plateaued and the FAA is redoubling efforts to keep the numbers dropping. The U.S. Helicopter Safety Team (USHST), an FAA-led initiative with the lofty goal of eliminating helicopter fatalities, released the latest stats on accident rates and […]