Risk Management

Although they’re relative rarities these days, as pilots, we all react to airline crashes just as we always have. We’re sober-minded and analytical so we don’t even allow ourselves a conversation inside our heads in speculation about potential causes because we’re waiting for the investigators, right? That’s ridiculous. Of course we speculate, forming snap opinions […]

The FAA has increased controller staffing at Las Vegas’s McCarran International Airport tower after the only controller on duty late Wednesday apparently became incapacitated at her position. Confused pilots on the ground stopped where they were for about eight minutes and talked among themselves about the issues in the tower before a second controller returned […]

Three hundred people from across the European general aviation community attended the 2018 European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) Annual Safety Conference in Vienna, Austria, earlier this week. During the two-day event, the agency reviewed progress and set out its future commitments for the “GA Roadmap,” an initiative launched in 2014 that EASA says aims to […]

Aireon’s real-time, space-based global flight tracking is now up and running, the company announced on Monday, providing the first tracking system to cover the entire world, even polar regions and oceans. The system uses FlightAware’s intuitive technology interface and an aircraft’s ADS-B system to provide trackers with flight data—including origin, destination, flight plan and ETA. […]

One person died but two others were uninjured in a midair collision between a Piper Cheyenne and another unidentified aircraft near Canada’s capital city of Ottawa on Sunday. The Cheyenne pilot reported the touch to ATC and did not declare an emergency. “Somebody hit the bottom side of my aircraft,” the unidentified pilot told the […]

Canadian prosecutors want the book thrown at a Quebec pilot whose beef against a utility company turned into what some suggested was an act of domestic terrorism using an Aerocruiser homebuilt, a kit aircraft he designed. Government lawyers have asked for the full 10-year maximum sentence on “mischief” charges against Normand Dub, who came close […]

Many VFR, and inexperienced IFR, pilots mistakenly believe that an instrument rating allows you to launch into “weather.” After all, instrument pilots have been trained to fly on the gages, so making the decision to fly into the clouds shouldn’t be difficult. Veteran IFR pilots understand the complexity of the go/no-go decision. There are weather […]

Thanks to the contents of the FAA’s new airman certification standards (ACS), which are replacing the practical test standards (PTS), most applicants for pilot certificates and ratings must now demonstrate that they can identify, assess and mitigate risk. Although the FAA and industry organizations have developed flight risk assessment tools (FRATs) to help pilots identify […]

As the oft-paraphrased aphorism goes, all is well when the ties that bind us are stronger than the stresses that can separate us. The same goes for parking an aircraft. When we properly secure it after a flight, it’s reasonable to expect it’ll be there when we return. Once we release the ties that bind […]

When Carli McConaughy pulled on the big control column in the middle of the helicopter she was flying in over Honolulu last week, she had no idea what she was doing but she likely saved her own life and those of her fianc and the unconscious pilot beside her. McConaughy, 35, and her newly betrothed […]