Risk Management

A man who rode a lawn chair suspended by 100 large helium balloons into the approaches of Calgary International Airport in a 2015 publicity stunt was described as “unconscionably stupid” by a judge who assessed $26,500 CAD in financial penalties but no jail time. Daniel Boria, 27, of Calgary, pleaded guilty to dangerous operation of […]

A while ago I had a long, interesting discussion on the topic of preparing for inflight emergencies with a pilot whose day job was as a surgeon who trained surgeons. He had an interesting perspective on the subject based on how he taught aspiring cutters: He had them sit down and write down everything that […]

The Aviation Herald is reporting that the European Aviation Safety Agency is about to issue a safety information bulletin about high-altitude wake turbulence after a Challenger 604 business jet was written off after flying 1,000 feet below an A380. According to the Aviation Herald, the incident happened Jan. 7 over the Arabian Sea. The vortices […]

Officials at a Montreal flight school say they are at a loss to explain how two Chinese students flying school-owned Cessna 152s collided above a busy shopping mall and crashed on Friday, killing one of the students and severely injuring the other. One of the aircraft went through the roof of the mall; the other […]

On the afternoon of Thursday, October 23, 2014, I was flying from Goodyear, Arizona to Boulder City, Nevada, in the Van’s RV-8 that I built and have been flying for two years. I fly this very scenic desert route once a week to get to work. Weather permitting, I try to choose a course that […]

AOPA President Mark Baker has written the aviation authorities of three countries whose airspace borders the U.S. asking that they accept new BasicMed medical requirements that will cover some private pilots. BasicMed goes into effect in May 1 and is expected to be adopted by many U.S. pilots but Canada, Mexico and the Bahamas don’t […]

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 […]

When I was preparing this week’s Question of the Week, I was up to the third question when I realized that blood cheering for errant drone pilots to be jailed is not a good thing. In fact, it’s a distinctly bad thing, absent any malicious intent or egregious negligence. To review, this concerns the story […]

The pilot of a Hawker Hunter that crashed in 2015 killing 11 people may have confused the aircraft he was flying with another type, the U.K.’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch concluded last week. In its final report on the crash at the Shoreham Airshow in southern England, the AAIB said pilot Andy Hill, an experienced […]

There I was, sliding down from my cruising altitude toward my VFR destination, still 30 or so miles out. It had been a smooth ride, and Otto was following a heading and descending at the selected 400 fpm. I had let the power come up during the descent, along with airspeed. The big Continental in […]