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Possibly the biggest impact will be on helicopter stats. The NPRM removes an exclusion for ground damage to rotors and tail rotors, and now requires that all such incidents be reported as “accidents.” Helicopter Association International (HAI) President Roy Resavage is urging members to forward comments to both HAI and the NTSB by March 7. […]

New “Incidents” Soon To Be Reportable, Too Look for the “accident” rate to increase in coming years — and you can blame it on the NTSB. The body charged with trying to keep us out of trouble has come up with some new definitions for the term “accident,” and it could cause a spike in […]

Since 1998, the OIG has won convictions in more than 150 cases related to aviation safety, with total fines assessed of more than $27 million. Those investigations generally fall into four categories: the illegal manufacture or distribution of aircraft parts that do not meet FAA standards; charges of falsifying airman or mechanic certificates; false statements […]

While it might be expected that felons can go to prison for aviation-related crimes such as selling bogus aircraft parts, many aviators presume that the penalty for lying on an FAA application would be the revocation of the certificate. However, Harry Hobgood, assistant U.S. attorney in the North Carolina case, said that pilots shouldn’t be […]

Student Pilot Gets Five Months In Prison Whatever your reason may be … A man who lied on his FAA application for a Student Pilot certificate was sentenced to five months in prison by a U.S. District Court in Winston Salem, N.C., earlier this month. Tony Cox, 45, of Burlington, N.C., was sentenced on a […]

Meanwhile, Corona Municipal Airport, about 20 miles east of Los Angeles, reopened after a devastating flood last month, but had to close again as the water keeps coming back. “They just got done cleaning up the mud, repainting the taxiway and runway markings, fixing the gates, inspecting the buildings, restoring water and power, and reopening […]

On Saturday, officials announced they had secured a $6 million federal grant to be split between the airport and an erosion-control project. “This is all very good news,” Rowena Mason, president of the Santa Paula Airport Association, told The Ventura County Star. “Businesses [at the airport] keep asking us whether they need to move. The […]

Rain Washing Away Runways Rampant (and perhaps record-setting) rains in southern California have wrecked about one-third of the 2,650-foot runway at Santa Paula Airport, a busy, privately owned public-use GA field about 20 miles northwest of Los Angeles. Santa Paula is home to about 300 planes, many of them vintage. The banks of the Santa […]

Pilots who have suffered head injuries and are being evaluated for a return to flight duties should be held to a standard above what is considered average in the general population, a new study from the University of Missouri-Columbia suggests. “Military aviators score significantly higher on standardized intelligence tests than the average person,” said researcher […]

Youth Can Be Dangerous While the Age-60 rule presumes that pilots become less safe with advancing age, recent research suggests that youth comes with dangers of its own. The part of the brain that inhibits risky behavior does not mature until age 25, according to a study by the National Institutes of Health. “We’d thought […]