Risk Management

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 […]

The Canadian Transportation Safety Board yesterday released its findingon a 2013 multiple-fatality midair collision between a Cessna 150 and a motor glider with an analysis that said the 150 pilot was probably wearing a baseball cap that affected his ability to see the glider. While only one of several factors mentioned regarding visibility, including relative […]

Tuesday, the NTSB released a report on pilot drug use that, based on post-crash toxicology tests on pilots killed in aircraft accidents from 1990 through 2012, concluded drug use of all types, particularly over-the-counter (OTC) drugs, is up among pilots and that the risk of pilot impairment is on the rise. However, the study did […]

When I was at the Pipistrel factory in Slovenia last April, the techs were patiently amused while I wrapped a wing-mounted GoPro camera with a safety layer of duct tape. I’d stuck the thing under the wing with the standard GoPro 3M pressure sensitive base. “You know,” one of them said, “we never do that. […]

Its never good when a general aviation accident leads the evening news, but that was the case Friday when a TBM 900 became a ghost flight off the South Carolina coast and continued south before crashing in the water off Jamaica early in the afternoon. As we reported, the TBM departed Rochester, New York on […]

The aviation industry has been warned about the possibility of flight disruptions caused by activity at Iceland’s largest volcano system. Intense seismic tremors have been recorded at Iceland’s Bardarbunga volcano for the past several days, although there are no signs yet of an eruption. Iceland’s Met Office has raised the risk level to the aviation […]

For the second time in less than three weeks, a small plane made a forced landing on a Sarasota County, Florida beach. Television station WWSB Channel 7 is reporting that just before noon Tuesday, the Air Traffic Control tower at Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport called 911. A Pitts Special reported an engine power loss and landed […]