Aviation Safety

Take an 80-degree summer afternoon, clear skies, high pressure and light winds. Add an airplane, a friend or spouse, and pick a destination a few hours away. While youre at it, throw in the family dog.

This is a scenario many general aviation pilots would consider the ultimate in personal aviation – the perfect time to embark on what may be the perfect trip. For one Colorado pilot, however, the prognosis wasnt so sunny.

The pilot had accumulated more than 14,500 hours, many of them as a Part 135 helicopter pilot. He had single and multi ratings and instrument ratings for both airplanes and helicopters. He had once been a flight instructor. Even though he was retired, he still held a…

Severe turbulence on a clear day…or what my glider rating should have taught me.

I fly a Cessna 340 mostly for business on the West Coast. The weather in southern California was fairly typical on this early June day, with fog along the coast and clear inland.

I hadnt flown for several weeks, so I thought I would fly up to Tehachapi from my home base of Palomar Airport near San Diego for my $400 hamburger. The instrument departure was uneventful as I canceled IFR and continued on the 35 minute flight VFR with flight following.

The air was smooth at 12,500 feet, even though the winds were reported at 25-30 knots almost directly on the nose. I started my descent for Tehachapi and…

Its easy to feel like you have a guardian angel when youre flying into an airport with a functioning control tower, especially one thats equipped with DBRITE and well-trained controllers. But there still is no substitute for peeled eyeballs and an awareness of what other airplanes are actually doing (as opposed to what theyre supposed to be doing).

Recently I was nearing a busy controlled airport just as controllers were switching from one runway to the opposite one. There were multiple airplanes on instrument approaches, several waiting to take off, a couple in the pattern and a few more approaching pattern entry. I was cleared to enter a right base for the new runway, but by the tim…

The following information is derived from the FAAs Service Difficulty Reports and Aviation Maintenance Alerts.

———-

The FAA has issued a Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin that warns of possible AD action requiring gyro backups for IFR flight.

The SAIB cautions pilots to conduct a condition check of the vacuum or pressure system prior to each IFR flight.

Last falls crash of a Cessna 335 carrying Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan prompted a review of service difficulty reports of vacuum system components. In the past 27 years, mechanics have filed 2,003 reports – 18 in the 12 months prior to the bulletin.

Parker Hannifin (Airborne) has acknowledged a potential late…

As the Airport Director of the DeKalb Peachtree Airport, I must take great umbrage with The Clock Runs Out [Accident Probe, June]. It is apparent and unfortunate that Mr. Ibold either did not read the final NTSB report, or, at the very least, took great literary license in his interpretation of the report.

To intimate the fire response crew did anything wrong is totally without merit.

Because PDK is the second-busiest airport in Georgia, our ARFF crew gets to practice responding to many alerts throughout the year in all types of weather conditions. Responding to this specific alert was almost second nature to them in communicating with the tower and in responding to a staging locat…

At 2019 mountain time, a Mooney M20C crashed during a steep descent about 16 miles north-northeast of Glenwood Springs. The pilot was killed. The flight was headed VFR from Kremmling, Colo., to Grand Junction. About a half-hour after takeoff, the airplane made a wide turn to the left of approximately 450 degrees, followed immediately by a tight turn to the right of approximately 360 degrees. Two radar antenna sites were used to track the airplane. The first site lost radar contact at 2019:19, when the target was at 13,500 feet msl and the second site lost radar contact at 2019:33, when the target was at 10,500 feet msl – a descent of 3,000 feet in 14 seconds. Weather conditions did not allow…

At approximately 1855 central time, a Piper PA-28RT-201T crashed while maneuvering near Marianna. The pilot and his passenger were killed. The pilot called for a weather briefing for a flight from Little Rock to Tunica, Miss., and was advised of low ceilings and marginal VFR along the route of flight. The pilot responded, Ill be heading to Tunica VFR. Guess Ill be scudding it, it looks like. The airplane was found to have hit a 60-foot tree about 40 feet up, at an elevation of less than 300 feet msl….

At about 1553 Alaska time, a Piper PA-31-350 was damaged during an inadvertent wheels-up landing at Fairbanks International Airport. The pilot and eight passengers aboard the Part 135 flight were not injured. The pilot said that, as he entered the pattern, he was told by the tower to cross over and enter right traffic for runway 1. The tower then told him he would have to extend downwind because of traffic. The pilot said he decided not to put the landing gear down at the usual point because of the request to extend his pattern. He said as he started to extend his pattern, the tower asked him to expedite a base turn and keep it tight. The pilot said he failed to complete his checklist on t…

At about 1935 eastern time, a Cessna 172P crashed into the ocean while on approach to Ocean City Municipal Airport. Two passengers died and the pilot and a third passenger were not recovered. Another pilot said he was approaching the airport at the same time as the accident airplane. The accident pilot called Unicom looking for a taxi, but the witness pilot told him the airport closed at sunset and hed have to get a taxi when he landed. The witness pilot saw the accident pilot make the turn to downwind for runway 20 and, as he neared the departure end of runway 14, the airplane went from horizontal flight to vertical. The witness pilot said it was a clear but dark night….

At about 1240 eastern time, a Cirrus SR-20 crashed near Lexington, but the pilot and pilot-rated passenger were not injured. The pilot planned to perform some practice instrument approaches in actual instrument conditions. The passenger was a friend of the pilot and also held a private pilot certificate. Both held instrument ratings. The pilot said he set the autopilot to the heading bug and was loading an approach into the airplanes GPS when he noticed the turn coordinator pegged to the left with no flag and the airplane losing altitude. He disengaged the autopilot and attempted to stabilize the airplane. The airplane was descending rapidly at a high airspeed. When it broke out of the clou…