Risk Management

One of the benefits I have found of being in the aviation writing business is that I get the chance to fly a fair number of other people’s planes. Whether I am doing it to write a flight review on the type, test or check out new avionics, or am simply offered the chance to […]

The NTSB issued a Safety Alert (PDF) on Wednesday aimed at pilots who wear helmets while flying that have a cord attached to the aircraft’s internal communication system. Those cords may not easily detach in the case of an emergency, the safety board has found. The board cited two accidents, both involving helicopters, when the […]

GA groups have mustered some considerable star power to fight the proposed privatization of air traffic control in the U.S. and will be unleashing the campaign on Tuesday at the opening general session of the NBAA-BACE in Las Vegas. Such well-known aviators as Apollo 13 astronaut Jim Lovell, Flight 1549 Capt. Chesley Sullenberger, aerobatics pilot […]

It’s been stormy in Europe this week and that, of course, has sent planespotters to runways all over the continent looking for gear-punishing landings and they found a couple. The bounce on the 747 landing at Schiphol in Amsterdam is cringeworthy while the A380 arrival at Frankfurt reminds us the wind demands respect, no matter […]

Canadian officials say they’ll talk to their counterparts in India after air traffic controllers reportedly ignored a series of Mayday calls from an Air Canada Boeing 787 and ordered the crew to enter holds instead. The Dreamliner had finished a 16-hour flight from Toronto to Mumbai on Sept. 18 but a runway overrun by a […]

AVweb’s General Aviation Accident Bulletin is taken from the pages of our sister publication, Aviation Safety magazine 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 web site at www.ntsb.gov. Final […]

There were no serious injuries in the crash of a 1964 C-model Mooney in Middlesex, Virginia, on Saturday that was absorbed by a luckily vacant house. The owner lives elsewhere and there was no one living there. The aircraft, registered in Pensacola, had two adults and a teen aboard when it left Hummel Field near […]

Air France is facing a daunting technical challenge to repair an extensively damaged A380 at one of Canada’s most remote airports. Flight 66 from Paris to Los Angeles was almost across the Atlantic when the No. 4 engine had an uncontained failure that blew off the cowl and caused the fan to separate. The crew […]

When I was a baby flight instructor I, as with most instructors, rapidly learned a great deal about airplanes and the humans who fly them. Despite being a slow learner, some of those lessons stuck with me. Whenever I get into a discussion of the value of training for stalls, stall avoidance, spin avoidance and […]

I’ve noticed there is a bias, sometimes spoken aloud, that a pilot who made some sort of a mistake and had an accident was either not terribly bright, lacked basic skills or just plain didn’t have the magical “right stuff.” As an instrument instructor, I’ve certainly seen pilots with poor skills or who weren’t terribly […]