Aviation Safety

A monthly summary of recently published NTSB preliminary accident reports involving general aviation and air carrier aircraft.

Cheap, fast or good—pick two—probably isn’t the best way to find quality aircraft maintenance. 

The bill’s passage ratchets up the rhetoric surrounding leaded aviation gasoline.

The FAA has generated an airworthiness concern sheet (ACS), which typically precedes an airworthiness directive. 

NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System offers a wealth of resources on real-world operations. And more.

Yes, you may have more options with a partial power loss instead of complete engine failure, but don’t get fancy.

Modern area navigation systems are incredible tools, but some of the terminology can create confusion.

Even professional pilots and controllers get it wrong sometimes. How can the rest of us keep up and minimize safety risks?

Ground-Reference Illusions During my career, I’ve spent a good bit of time analyzing the perceptual illusions to which we humans are prone, as they affect us pilots. It’s easy to find examples of simple or classic illusions, but when piloting an airplane, the things we see and feel are so complex that they don’t allow […]

If you’re like me, you subscribe to several aviation-related information sources, of which there are many genres. Some of the ones I pay attention to include brief quizzes plus scenarios designed for us to self-assess how risky a proposed operation might be. An example might be asking if you would take off in a VFR-only […]