Risk Management

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 […]

A Lion Air Boeing 737 crashed into the Java Sea just after takeoff early Monday and the fate of the 189 people aboard remains unknown. The aircraft was en route toPangkal Pinang island, about 400 miles north, when it went down just off the coast. It crashed into the water13 minutes after takeoff following an […]

When a crime is committed within a mile of the Chula Vista Police Department in southern California, chances are the first on the scene will be a drone. The police in the community near San Diego are the first to get an FAA waiver to fly over buildings and people to help officers assess a […]

Researchers in France have found that birds display an aversion to “large looming eyespots,” and will avoid locations where they can see the eyespot display. The results were “significant,” the researchers said, and “suggest a high potential for application.” The eyespots are projected on a screen and animated to grow larger, as if approaching the […]

An Embry-Riddle research study found that remotely operated consumer drones exceeded 400 feet AGL in 6.8 percent of flights tracked and that one flew as close as 0.25 NM from Daytona Beach International’s approach path. The study sought to evaluate “potential aviation interference and safety hazards” caused by small unmanned aircraft system (sUAS/drone) flights. To […]

A Los Angeles-based “stunt rapper” died Saturday while wing walking for a video shoot in southern British Columbia. Details are scant but early reports said Jon James McMurray, a professional skier who set videos of himself and others engaged in extreme sports to his own hip hop music, fell off the wing of an airplane […]

AVweb’sGeneral Aviation Accident Bulletinis taken from the pages of our sister publication,Aviation Safetymagazine, and is published twice a month. All the reports listed here are preliminary and include only initial factual findings about crashes. You can learn more about the final probable cause in the NTSB’s website atwww.ntsb.gov. Final reports appear about a year after […]