Risk Management

Boots and weeping wings are fine as far as they go, but it’s also nice to have some means of automatically detecting and alarming the presence of ice in flight. A company called SafeFlight is out with a new device that does just that. view on YouTube

The NTSB said Wednesday a “punitive culture and inadequate safety management” along with poor weather caused the crash of an Alaska Department of Public Safety helicopter on March 30, 2013. The single-engine Eurocopter crashed in wooded and snow-covered terrain east of Talkeetna, killing the pilot, another state trooper and the snowmobiler they had just rescued.The […]

Losing people in a flight program is gut-wrenchingly hard and today I feel for all of the folks at Scaled Composites. None of them set out to lose a friend and injure another when they prepared to launch SpaceShipTwo last Friday. Their goal was the same as every person or team that has ever taken […]

Bored as I sometimes am with Aviation Hall of Fame nominees and Lifetime Achievement Awards, to amuse myself, I’m inventing a new category: Best filming of a gear-up landing. I’m calling it the Oh-S&^t Award and hope to announce it every year about this time. I won’t lack for examples because there are (a) a […]

The NTSB has released its preliminary report on the Oct. 7 fatal crash of a Cal Fire S-2F3AT tanker that was engaged in fighting the Dog Rock forest fire in Yosemite National Park, California. The NTSB reports that the crew of an aircraft that was operating as a controller for the firefighting operation and orbiting […]

The aircraft involved was a 1973 Cessna T210L. It had a current annual inspection, was ADS-B compliant, had a GPS approved for IFR operations and the database for the avionics was found to be current. The aircraft was not approved for flight into known icing conditions, a concern for the planned October flight into the […]

AVweb’s weekly submersion into what’s new in general aviation uncovered news of everything from a new Colorado Aviation Hall of Fame inductee through a Canadian flight safety contest, an SMS program for EMS transport to a new line of high performance brakes that can be retrofitted onto Cirrus Aircraft. Charlie Johnson, President and COO of […]

Due to fears of the disease Ebola, five of the busiest international airports in the U.S. are enhancing screening measures for arriving passengers who began their travel in West African countries. According to a report in the Washington Post, the travelers will be given questionnaires and have their temperatures taken at John F. Kennedy International […]

Flying IFR under Part 91 gives us pilots an incredible amount of freedom. Yet, it is this relative freedom from heavy regulation which is largely responsible for general aviation’s safety record, and it, frankly, is not all that great. No, flying little airplanes is not as safe as flying the airlines. Nor is it as […]

When I saw these photos–kindly sent to me by long-time reader Art Friedman–I immediately thought what a great real-world example they would be to illustrate Charles Law for a high school physics class. Or is it Boyle’s Law? Maybe both. It’s also a grim reminder of the value of always having a knife near at […]