Accident Probes

If humans had been meant to fly at night, they would have been given better internal gyros.

Its never a good idea to try beating a thunderstorm to your destination.

In-flight emergencies may require us to divert but we still have to fly the approach

A relatively inexperienced pilot botches his landing on a short, soft turf runway.

A rusty pilot attempts to ferry a twin with fuel-system and propeller problems.

A low-time pilot elects to fly into deteriorating weather at night and without an Instrument rating. The result was predictable.

Complicated weather patterns demand a full and complete weather briefing for anything but a casual flight in the airport vicinity. Heres why.

The NTSB has several (too many, actually…) categories it uses to classify aviation incidents and accidents. Among them is the catch-all phrase improper IFR, which the Board usually uses to describe a pilot executing procedures you wont find in the Aeronautical Information Manual.But there is no similar category for controllers who, for whatever reason, provide substandard and/or confusing service to pilots clearly suffering under a high workload. A good example of how the improper IFR label can be applied to controllers as well as pilots-simultaneously-occurred on January 23, 2003, when a Cirrus SR-20 collided with power lines near San Jose, Calif.The Private pilot/owner was kille…

A daylight scud run in a slow airplane is risky enough. This accident reveals how deadly it can be at night in a fast airplane.

Few things demand getting the airplane on the ground more quickly than an in-flight fire. Heres why.