Risk Management

The FAA has issued a statement warning operators of unmanned aircraft (UAS/drones) to stay away from wildfires. The agency emphasized that while proper use of drones for firefighting missions can provide a lot of useful information, unauthorized flights risk lives, especially since firefighting operations typically occur in the same airspace as the majority of hobby […]

Unleaded Avgas “Regardless of which fuel is selected, on that first takeoff, what will YOU be thinking?” I’ll be thinking “I’m glad I’m not flying behind a high-HP engine that needs 100-octane fuel” 😉 Joking aside, I’ve been saying that I’ll be glad to do away with TEL because I won’t have to worry about […]

The National Weather Service needs to do a better job of forecasting low-level turbulence, which can affect GA pilots, the NTSB said in a recent Safety Recommendation (PDF). The recommendation is part of the safety board’s ongoing investigation of the crash of a Pilatus PC-12 in April 2017. The PC-12, operating as an air ambulance, […]

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 […]

After a half-century of experience in the cargo flying sector, long-time pilot Stan DeLong has seen it all. He claims to be semi-retired, but he still flies a Piper Navajo Chieftain during United Parcel Service’s peak season, and is chief pilot and check airman for Gem Air, LLC. If you make the mistake of assuming […]

Chief among the many comments and reactions to the suicide by Rich Russell in a Horizon Airlines Q400 on Friday was the wonder about how a ramp attendant could take off and do aerobatics in a regional airliner. Well, Russell may have provided the answer himself. He told air traffic controllers he played video games […]

Now that it has sunk below the fold—or will have by the time you read this—the most surprising thing about Friday’s bizarre stolen Q400 incident is that it wasn’t streamed live on Facebook. Now that I’ve typed that, I realize someone will send a link saying, oh, but it was. I’ve been scanning the domestic […]

A Horizon Air Q400 crashed on Ketron Island near Seattle-Tacoma Airport in Washington State after 29-year-old ramp worker Rich Russell was able to take it off from the busy international airport. The motive was suicide and it was not a terrorist act. Russell used a tug to turn around the aircraft, which was waiting for […]

Engineers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have developed a new control algorithm that they say will allow a drone to autonomously herd flocks of birds away from an airport. According to the university, the project was inspired by the encounter with a flock of geese that resulted in US Airways Flight 1549 being […]

Flying is often a convenient and valuable means of travel. But it can also be lethal if we fail to abide some simple guidelines designed to keep us safe. Many of these rules, procedures, and limits were explained to us by our instructors, and then followed up by a request that we make a vow […]