Risk Management

BAE Systems recently demonstrated a system that provides helicopter pilots with situational awareness of their immediate surroundings while flying in zero visibility conditions. The company seeks to improve statistics that show more combat helicopters have been lost in Afghanistan to low visibility conditions than to enemy fire. The Brownout Landing Aid System Technology (BLAST) mixes […]

The FAA is sending a letter and fact sheet to all U.S. pilots to make them aware of the potentially negative effects that certain types of common over-the-counter and prescription drugs could have on the safety of flight. Specifically, the FAA notes the “sedative effects” caused by “many medications” and the ability of some medications […]

Automation is a routine part of our lives now, dictated by sweeping new technologies and consumer preferences. Arguably, the trend toward automation began in aviation in the 1970s. It has been debated and resisted by many in the aviation community, but the game has recently changed for both the airlines and general aviation. Yet, our […]

IMC Club has partnered with Hartzell to help IFR pilots be at the top of their game when they leave AirVenture this year. Hartzell is providing a tent for the club to host an IFR Proficiency Center from July 29 to Aug. 2. The tent is on the flight line and the daily sessions will […]

The NTSB Thursday released the first in a series of videos highlighting circumstances and decision-making that have led to GA accidents with fatal outcomes and seeks to identify and reduce risks for GA pilots. Four more videos will follow. The videos, dubbed Video Safety Alerts, by the NTSB all run less than 5 minutes in […]

John Guimond, an airport manager in Maine, and Ron Cote have responded to a fatal aircraft accident by working to develop a fixed-base audio recorder for the purpose of capturing radio transmissions at small airports. Inspiration for the unit that they call the General Audio Recording Device (GARD) came from the November 16, 2012, collision […]

I have spent a lifetime fooling around in high-risk sports-flying, skydiving, motorcycles. It follows that I have a lot of friends who do the same and a few weeks ago, I lost one of them. In any high-risk activity, there are always people who rise to the top and stand apart from the rest and […]

I do it. You do it. We all do it. As pilots, in the wake of an accident like Asiana 214 last Saturday in San Francisco, we crank up our piety and discipline and decline public comment until the investigators are done. But amongst ourselves, theres no such restraint and theres not much in the […]

On Saturday afternoon, I was grinding away on the cross trainer at my local gym watching CNN try cover the Asiana crash at San Francisco. I say “try” because reporters with absolutely no meaningful information were attempting to fill air time. Nothing new about that. For the hour or so that I watched the coverage, […]

The NTSB’s recent release of a final report regarding the fatal November 13, 2011, crash of a Cirrus SR-22T shed light on a flight noteworthy for its aerobatics; it also invites speculation regarding the potentially untapped value of recorded flight data in general aviation. Both Avidyne and Garmin produce avionics (the Entegra and G1000, for […]