Aviation Safety

Thanks for Taxi Smack, your excellent piece on taxiing accidents (Airmanship, August). I am a 2000+ hours pilot with a CPL/IR. One of the milk runs I make in my Mooney goes into Zurich, Switzerland, an airport I know well.

Some months ago, the authorities at ZRH decided to redesign GA parking, although no new taxi plate was published. Upon arrival I was assigned a familiar row and guided in by a follow-me van. When departing two days later in perfect weather, I got my IFR, startup and taxi clearances and taxied out in the normal fashion, turning left on the taxiway leading to the apron.

Within 100 meters I found the taxiway to the main apron was temporarily closed and a new lane for…

The following briefs were selected from the 184 preliminary reports filed with the NTSB in June 1999. Statements in quotes were taken directly from the NTSB documents. The information is subject to change as the investigations are completed. Click here to view “Accident Totals, June.”

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June 1, Little Rock, Ark.
McDonnell Douglas MD-82
American Airlines Flight 1420 crashed after landing at Little Rock. There were thunderstorms and heavy rain in the area at the time of the accident. The airplane departed the end of runway, went down an embankment and struck approach light structures. There was a crew of six and 139…

All pilots have had them, those flights where you make a little mistake and it goes unnoticed for a long time.

Maybe its leaving the gear down until you get to cruise, and only then figuring out why the airspeed is so low. Perhaps you left the transponder on standby and didnt correct it until a gentle reminder crackled over the headset. And some people have been known to forget to turn off the autopilot, which makes a traffic pattern a difficult thing to fly.

The point is that minor problems rarely turn into major ones, because usually theyre caught in time. And even if theyre not caught until the airplane lands, there are few such mistakes that carry severe penalties. Occasional…

The accident involving JFK Jr. has focused a lot of attention on the plight of VFR pilots flying in marginal visibility and at night because it is a common cause of fatal accidents.

Getting boxed in by weather is easy to do, but preventing it is almost as easy. Dealing with it, while a little more difficult, isnt that hard either.

For non-instrument rated pilots, the first consideration is the pre-flight weather briefing. Despite the fact that a 1,000-foot ceiling and 3 miles visibility is legally VMC, it is not practical to attempt VFR flight beyond sight of the airport in such conditions.

Outside of the obvious problems of navigation and aircraft control, your ability to spot…

Looking toward the horizon isnt just the province of sailors looking for land or of preteens daydreaming their way through history class.

Pilots use it on virtually every flight to take off and land, certainly, but also to keep the airplane upright. When a natural horizon isnt available, an artificial one inside the cockpit allows pilots on instruments to keep the airplane under control. Basic stuff, certainly, but loss of control due to disorientation remains a leading cause of accidents in aviation.

Anyone with a pulse was inundated by the coverage of the crash of John Kennedy Jr. off Marthas Vineyard in July. Regardless of your opinion of the quality or the saturation of the med…

Theres an old saying in aviation that youll hear throughout your flying career: Trust your instruments.

Anyone who has had instrument training has been beaten over the head by the instructor. The strategy is necessary in order to overcome your proprioceptive sensors – the so-called seat of the pants sensations – that you learned to rely on when flying VFR.

Yet, what may not have been emphasized is that your instruments can and occasionally will lie to you. Therefore a basic function of cockpit resource management requires a continuous cross-check of the engine, flight and navigation instruments. Its akin to the old saw, just because youre paranoid, dont think someones not ou…

I suspect many pilots spent the weekend of July 17th the same way I did: Alternately fielding puzzled questions from friends about the John F. Kennedy Jr. crash and being irritated beyond description by round-the-clock news coverage of the incident, much of it depressingly incompetent.

When the local news outlet wanted answers now, a pimply faced 300-hour CFI is suddenly transformed into an on-camera authority and those of us with the restraint to keep our traps shut while the NTSB does its duty can only grimace at the results.

At a dinner party that weekend, I was asked by a friend You wouldnt do that, would you? as if that was as plain as the nose on my face, even as the Coast G…

Id heard it numerous times from all my flight instructors: Never fly fatigued. I had prided myself in always following all of the flying rules from A to Z. However, on this particular night all reason left me as I prepared to fly a 250-mile solo night flight from Albert Lea, Minn., to Fargo, N.D.

I had just finished driving from my home in Chicago to Albert Lea, a six-hour drive, which had started at 1 oclock that afternoon. I was tired as I rolled into Albert Lea to check in with my commercial instructor. He mentioned that I needed a 250-mile cross-country trip and five hours of night solo flight and said it was a beautiful night to accomplish both.

He asked if I was tired, but as a…

July 1999 will have a bit of infamy in the aviation world for years to come. Not only did New York (and the rest of us) lose JFK Jr. to a light plane accident, National Air and Space Museum chief Donald Engen died when the motorized glider in which he was riding suffered an in-flight breakup.

Of course, popular media managed to present startlingly inaccurate information to the general public about the safety of light plane flying, especially in its round-the-clock coverage of the search for Kennedy and his passengers. The misconceptions born out of that coverage are bound to stay with us long after the average American forgets what VFR means. Many people stubbornly concluded what theyd a…

The following information is derived from the FAAs Service Difficulty Reports and Aviation Maintenance Alerts. Click here to view “Airworthiness Directives.”

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Textron Lycoming engines have come under scrutiny again, this time for crankshaft counterweight pilot holes that were out of round, resulting in the possible failure of the crankshaft counterweight bushings or counterweight ears.

The FAA has issued a Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin to help operators identify abnormal crankshafts and prevent premature engine failure.

Lycoming manufactured an unknown number of nonconforming crankshafts, and five have failed in t…