Accidents

Three Drug Enforcement Agency agents survived the crash of their Cessna 206 north of Sugar Land Regional Airport (SGR) near Houston, Texas, according to the Aviation Safety Network. The agents were headed to Sugar Land as part of a training mission when the airplane experienced mechanical difficulties, forcing an emergency landing near Fort Bend County […]

Burke Lakefront Airport (BKL) sits snugly nestled along the south shore of Lake Erie and serves mostly business and traditional general aviation traffic, along with a handful of air carrier operations. Pilots like the place for its convenience to downtown Cleveland. Late one December evening in 2016, the pilot of a Cessna Citation CJ4 lost […]

A twin-engine Cessna 335 crashed last Sunday about 10:40 a.m. local time as it approached Florida’s Palm Beach County Park/Lantana Airport. The 335 is an unpressurized version of Cessna’s once-popular Cessna 340. The pilot was last heard on a common traffic advisory frequency indicating he was making his turn to base leg for landing on […]

I have been thinking about some fascinating but challenging situations — events you hope never to encounter that involve decisions and require reactions to life-or-death consequences. “When to give up,” a decision not naturally part of most pilots’ DNA, has been rattling around in my brain for a long time, so here goes. Two events […]

17-year old student pilot Maggie Taraska did a fantastic job during a highly unusual solo flight this weekend at the Beverly Regional Airport (BVY), located just north of the Boston metropolitan area and under Logan International’s (BOS) Class B airspace. The Piper PA-28 Taraska was flying had just lifted off Runway 09, one of two […]

There’s truly good news for the GA community in this year’s Nall Report and analysis of general aviation accidents; GA pilots are flying more hours and having fewer accidents. The editors of the Joseph T. Nall Report view their goal in gathering and reviewing accident data pretty much the same way they have since the […]

Examining the aftermath of a mysterious, fatal crash of a 1950s Air Force trainer.

Remember that terrible hot-air balloon crash in central Texas a few summers back? The accident claimed 16 lives, including the pilot’s, when the balloon struck high-tension power lines following a short, early-morning flight. The crash claimed more lives than any other aviation accident in the previous seven years. Not to mention this was only a […]

The National Park Service has declared that it is too dangerous to recover the wreck of a sightseeing plane that crashed in Alaska earlier this month, according to a news release from the organization. On August 4, a deHavilland Beaver (DHC-2), operated by the “flightseeing” company, K2 Aviation, crashed about 14 miles southwest of the […]

Two men over the past few days took their own lives by using airplanes as instruments of their own deaths. Last Friday, a Horizon Air employee stole a Bombardier Q400 turboprop from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA), and took it on an hour-long joyride that included aerobatics before crashing the airplane on Kentron Island in Puget […]