Aviation Safety

Historically, more incidents and accidents occur during the landing phase of flight than any other time. A look at the numbers shows pilots do a notoriously lousy job of ending their flights.

Overruns, landing short, loss of control on the runway, bounces that collapse landing gear, porpoises that bend firewalls, the list of woes goes on and on. This record points to the importance of increasing landing skills and building your pride in being a proficient pilot.

Although the concept of a stabilized landing approach has been around for 10 or 12 years, how many pilots actually use one? Seldom do I see anyone on a flight review, or checkout who uses the method.

Its often said that…

For years Ive taught seminars on preventing human error to airline pilots, military pilots, fire fighters, bomb squads, search and rescue teams, smokejumpers and other teams involved in high risk activities.

One of the major portions of this seminar looks at decision-making, including some of the weaknesses and pitfalls of many peopl experience. Although the exact number may vary, depending on which study you quote, pilot decision-making is generally faulted in 85 percent of all aviation accidents.

At scientific conferences, academics and accident investigators hammer on pilots for faulty decision-making that lead to an accident. Ive often sat there quietly squirming because Ive…

To most pilots, the airplanes propeller is something routinely taken for granted. Oh sure, preflight may include running a hand over the blades in some pretended attempt to look for something. But many people dont have much of a clue as to what theyre looking for – maybe nicks or leading edge surface roughness from sand or water erosion.

Controllable-pitch props generally have some kind of flight time or calendar TBO, such as requiring an overhaul after 1,200 hours or five years, whichever comes first. Check the logbooks of most older airplanes, and you may find this to be the most commonly ignored manufacturer recommendation for Part 91 airplanes.

Some misguided owners, in an eff…

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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A sudden and complete engine failure forced the pilot of an American Champion 7GCBC to make an off-airport landing.

Investigators determined the engine failure was caused by melted P-lead wires that were bundled with an overheated wire connecting the master switch and the overvoltage relay. The cause of the overheated wire could not be readily determined, but the affected wire was not protected by a fuse or circuit breaker.

The accident investigators and a team from Ame…

Assessing your skills and your judgment are crucial, particularly when the weather refuses to cooperate

Aspen, Telluride, Hayden, Jackson, Sun Valley, Missoula, Ketchikan, Juneau.

These beautiful locations have some of the most treacherous instrument approaches found anywhere in the United States for one simple reason: big mountains. It will be many months before the NTSB issues its final report on the fatal accident of the Gulfstream that crashed during its final approach into Aspen on March 29, and the preliminary report it issued shortly after the crash contained less information than the local newspaper.

To state that the instrument approaches into these locations are tricky is an understatement. As a former EMS and fire-fighting pilot operating into all of these airports, I can te…

Last year the Federal Aviation Administration established a new organization called the Runway Safety Program with the stated goal, to design and execute a coherent, corporate action plan that will effectively reduce the number of incursions at our nations airports. After looking at the agencys efforts so far, one can only wonder how long they debated before deciding to make the plan coherent.

To guide the RSP, the FAA published a sweeping 34-page thesis titled, National Blueprint for Runway Safety (available on the internet at www.faa.gov/runwaysafety). The document lays out the agencys plan for countering what it has concluded is a…

The year was 1998 and it had been 14 years since I had last been in an airplane as a pilot. When I stopped flying in 1984, I held commercial, multiengine and instrument ratings and had approximately 1,000 hours of flying rented complex singles and light twins.

The time was finally right to get back into flying. After I got a medical certificate, I signed up for flight instruction from a highly qualified, mature CFI. The flying came back quickly, but the communications and instrument proficiency required more effort. Putting them all together was both frustrating and more demanding than Id anticipated.

After more than 50 hours of instruction, I convinced myself I could do it. The ne…

I learned some lessons recently about what it really means to be pilot-in-command, crew resource management, takeoff planning and personal minimums. I hold a commercial helicopter rating with private ASEL privileges and an instrument rating (obtained seven months ago). Total time is about 230 hours, with eight hours in actual IMC.

It was a typical winter day in the South, 48 degrees with a forecast of 1800 overcast, with temporary periods of 400-800 broken. It seemed like a good day to schedule some dual in actual IMC to maintain my IFR currency. Arriving at the airport, the temporary lower ceilings seemed a little more persistent than the forecast would indicate. On the non-precision…