Accidents

I’d just sunk my hands into a gloriously gluey lump of flour and water when the wall phone rang. Yes, I still have a landline, bake bread, can pickles, put up preserves and make mud pies. I grabbed the receiver with my grossly sticky hand and spent most of a half-hour listening to a young […]

The U.S. Helicopter Safety Team (USHST) said a recently completed analysis of fatal accidents that occurred between 2009 and 2013 will become the basis for a number of safety recommendations in addition to targeted community outreach efforts. Between 2016 and 2019, the USHST, an industry-government partnership, wants to see a reduction in fatal accidents. The […]

Piper PA-12 Burnet, Texas/Injuries: 2 Uninjured The flight instructor of the amphibious float-equipped airplane reported that after an instructional lesson, while returning to the airport, the student pilot was too low “while turning base leg” of the traffic pattern so the student pilot moved the throttle forward to add power, but the engine did not […]

Beech A36 Kernersville, North Carolina/Injuries: 3 Fatal The private pilot had recently purchased the airplane, and it was more complex than the airplane he had flown previously. The accident airplane was also equipped with an upgraded avionics suite. The pilot had practiced loading and flying instrument approaches with the new avionics during recent flights with […]

AOPA President Mark Baker contacted NBC News to voice the association’s concern that the network’s coverage of a fatal crash in Georgia last week presents a skewed view of general aviation safety. According to a story on AOPA.org, the association told the network that its coverage of a midair collision that killed three people on […]

Selfies, in case you have recently emerged from solitary confinement, are those self portraits, preferably set in interesting or unusual surroundings or amid a clump of friends, that one takes with a cellphone camera, sometimes holding it on the end of a selfie stick to gain a wider field of view. They have spawned a […]

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) says the recurrent training air traffic controllers receive to teach them how to effectively deal with pilots in need of emergency assistance often falls considerably short of any acceptable standard. This is also not the first time the NTSB cited the FAA over inadequate controller training. In a Safety […]

Hannes Arch, one of the select few pilots in the world to fly in the highly technical Red Bull Air Race series, died yesterday in a helicopter accident in the Austrian Alps. On Thursday evening Arch, who was an avid mountaineer, was flying a Robinson R66 helicopter from the Elberfelderstraße hut, a mountain hut located […]

An explosion at SpaceX’s launch pad in Cape Canaveral, Florida, Thursday morning sparked a social media storm when the blast sent clouds of smoke billowing into the sky and shook buildings several miles away. The Falcon 9 rocket, set for liftoff this Saturday, and its payload were destroyed in the incident. SpaceX pad on fire!! […]

The largest aircraft in the world, Hybrid Air Vehicles Airlander 10, which first flew last week, made a hard landing on its second test flight. The helium-filled structure had flown for more than 1.5 hours before it made a very steep approach into Cardington Airfield in Bedfordshire, U.K. In what appeared to be slow motion, […]