Aviation Safety

Flying at night should be as safe as daylight. Its not even close. Where the stakes go up when the sun goes down

Your lawyer got your DUI thrown out, so youre in the clear with the FAA. Odds are, thats one wrong assumption

Sometimes you have to abandon standard procedures. Just make sure you pick the right time to do it

Hop turns deadly as pilot battles coastal fog, swirling winds and unforgiving terrain. Did he take the task too lightly?

My biggest concern was my dog. I knew if the door flew off, hed bolt for the open door.

Perfect day for flying leads to complacent attitude and some not-so-perfect actions

Malibu fuselage frame assembly piece found deformed in apparent installation error

I am writing today regarding the Notam Mania article [Airmanship, September] that discussed flight restrictions. The Bureau of Land Management has been the only government agency to graphically plot all TFRs since July 2001 – and still is the only one doing it. See http://airspace.blm.gov.

The key word here is ALL. Duats, the prototype FAA website and the NTAP FAA page at do not map all TFRs. As a matter of fact they can leave a large volume unmapped. The AOPA site refers you to ours to get information on wildfires.

The Duats system is nice, but still does not plot all the TFRs. It leaves out the stadiums and the nuclear facilities…

At about 1500 Alaska time, a float-equipped Cessna 185 was landing on the water when it collided with a personal watercraft on Big Lake. The pilot was not injured but the operator of the watercraft received serious injuries. The pilot said he scanned the landing area from 500 feet as he overflew the lake, and again at 100 feet during the landing approach. As the airplane touched down, the pilot noticed a blurred object on the right side of the airplane and then felt and heard an impact on the right float. When the airplane settled off step, the pilot turned the airplane and observed the watercraft and rider. He noticed other witnesses coming to the aid of the rider and the airplane began to…

At 0859 eastern time, an unregistered Hawker Hunter T Mk 7A crashed shortly after takeoff from Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport, killing the pilot. The airplane was operated by Northern Lights Aerobatic Team, which had just purchased the airplane and was ferrying it to Canada. The airplane was based at Wilkes-Barre after it was imported from the United Kingdom and it was sold in June 2002 to a company in Florida. When a pilot tried to deliver the airplane to the buyer, he experienced mechanical difficulties and returned to Wilkes-Barre. The airplane sat in unpreserved storage for a year at Wilkes-Barre. Northern Lights bought the airplane in June 2003 and replaced the Rolls Royce…