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However, news-starved reporters (New Year’s Day is often regarded as the second slowest news day of the year, behind Easter Sunday) apparently didn’t see it that way. By Jan. 2, Walls was either a full-blown hero, a “character” with a reputation for taking chances, or incompetent, depending on the account. The saga began when Walls […]

“I Just Did My Job” It had all the makings of an Ernest K. Gann plot or Steven Spielberg thriller: a lone pilot, over a cold, forbidding sea, defying the odds and a mysterious fuel leak, and bringing his ship home on fumes, the engine stopping on the rollout. If only it were true. “There […]

Wednesday’s crash has given fresh ammunition to airport opponents and politicians who’d like to see operations at Teterboro curtailed. The airport is 12 miles from Manhattan and is consequently among the busiest GA airports in the U.S. On Thursday, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates Teterboro, decided to try to […]

Although it hasn’t been ruled out, airframe ice doesn’t seem to be a factor in the crash. Witnesses, surveillance videos and ground-crew personnel all seem to indicate the aircraft was ice-free as it departed for Chicago with eight investment bankers, a flight attendant and two pilots aboard. According to Debbie Hersman of the NTSB, one […]

Pilot Says He Couldn’t Raise Nose The pilot of a Challenger 600 bizjet that ran off the end of the runway at Teterboro Airport claims both he and his first officer were unable to pull the control yoke back, keeping them from raising the aircraft’s nose and forcing him to abort the takeoff. And the […]

As the plane descended from the north, its navigation gear picked up the signals from the ILS systems and gave the first officer, the non-flying pilot, a constant readout of the distance from Kelowna. So, when the pilot mistook the Vernon strip for Kelowna, he turned the plane 90 degrees to the right of the […]

According to the TSB, the string of errors began before Flight 183 left Toronto on its daily nonstop flight to Kelowna, a city of about 100,000 people 200 miles east of Vancouver. An Air Canada dispatcher, aware of a major forest fire burning near Kelowna, called Kelowna Tower to ask if the airport was even […]

A Chain Of Errors It’s a time-honored homily that aircraft accidents are usually the result of a series of small errors compounding toward catastrophe. Fortunately, in this case, an experienced Air Canada crew was able to figure out that it was landing at the wrong airport before the A319 was set down on a runway […]

Circumstances Raise Icing Concerns While it’s far too early to draw any conclusions, there are some stark similarities between the crash of a Bombardier Challenger CL-600 bizjet at Teterboro Airport on Wednesday and an aircraft from the same family in Colorado in November. Witnesses say the plane in New Jersey failed to lift off before […]

NAATS President Kate Breen told AVweb she believes aircraft groups have been sold a bill of goods, particularly on the issue of user fees. She said that once Lockheed Martin takes over, she believes it will be constantly looking for extra money to cover costs not foreseen in the contract and the FAA won’t have […]