Accidents

An Air Force B-1 bomber crashed in a remote area of southeastern Montana on Monday moments after its four crew members safely ejected, officials said. Two pilots and two weapons system officers were aboard the B-1 before it crashed at about 9:30 a.m. near Broadus, Montana. All four were transported to two South Dakota hospitals, […]

Raising questions about what role automation may have played in the August 14 UPS crash at Birmingham Shuttlesworth International Airport, the NTSB revealed that the Airbus A300’s autopilot and autothrottles were engaged all the way to the point of impact about three quarters of a mile short of the runway. According to the NTSB, the […]

Dover Air Force Base has reported that a Cessna 172 based at its Aero Club in Dover, Delaware, made an emergency landing, coming to a halt on a four-lane highway. Pictures indicate that the Cessna sustained damage to the outboard portion of the left wing and the left horizontal stabilizer, at minimum. However, according to […]

A UPS Airbus A300-600F crashed into a grassy rise about a half mile short of the runway at Birmingham Shuttlesworth International Airport (BHM) early Wednesday morning, killing both pilots and leaving a fiery debris path stretching nearly 1,000 feet. There was no distress call from the crew of the cargo plane prior to the crash, […]

NTSB investigators are narrowing in on reports that the Rockwell Turbo Commander 690B that crashed while attempting to land in rainy weather at Connecticut’s Tweed-New Haven Airport rolled inverted before descending vertically into homes. The pilot, retired Microsoft vice president Bill Henningsgaard, asked New Haven Tower for a straight-in landing as he flew an instrument […]

On August 8 at around 5:30 p.m. local time Key West Seaplanes pilots (and co-owners) Julie Ann Floyd and Nikali Pontecorvo were ferrying one of their pontoon-equipped Cessnas from Key West to Miami when they heard a distress call. An unidentified pilot was having engine trouble in the vicinity of Key Largo and wasn’t sure […]

On a Sunday morning in March a 150-hour private pilot, 61 years old, and his wife went for a short flight in a rented Cherokee Warrior. It was a nice blue-sky day. The nearest weather reporting point, 20 miles to the south, was calling the visibility 10 miles — which meant, for all practical purposes, […]

On Saturday August 24 the National Transportation Safety Board will hold a seminar on “lessons learned” from accidents involving experimental amateur-built (E-AB) aircraft. Though some 33,000 E-ABs constitute a bit less than 10 percent of the U.S. GA fleet, the category accounts for 15 percent of accidents and more than 20 percent of fatal accidents, […]

Highlighting the growing frustration aviation officials face in their quest to improve general aviation safety, accident statistics released this week remained virtually unchanged from 2011 to 2012, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. There were 1,471 GA accidents in 2012 versus 1,470 in 2011, according to the latest statistics compiled by the NTSB. Fatalities, […]

“Recognize that conversation is a powerful distracter.” As I quoted those words from the NASA study of crew error accidents in January’s article, a flood of accident case studies flowed through my head. Some I had discussed earlier in that same article — the Teterboro controller who was engaged in a discussion on the phone […]