Accidents

According to his mother, 17-year-old student pilot Jordan Smith had his own key and access to the security code provided by the owner of a Piper Twin Comanche in Jasper, Alabama. But on the night of New Year’s Day, the teen, who did not have a pilot’s license, apparently decided to take two friends for […]

One of my favorite jokes is the offhand remark that “Everyone talks about the weather, but no one ever does anything about it,” a quote that has been attributed to Mark Twain. Twain’s comment about the weather reminds us that there are some things, such as death, taxes and fuel prices, that we can complain […]

The NTSB is investigating the crash of a King Air 100 near Libby, Montana, early Wednesday that claimed the lives of the pilot and a passenger. According to local news reports, employees of Stinger Welding Inc. became concerned when CEO Carl Douglas never arrived for a planned meeting on Wednesday morning. A witness said she […]

A New Hampshire man who crashed his Cessna 310 on New Year’s Day in 2011, killing his daughter, will never get his pilot’s certificate back but avoided serving jail time after pleading guilty to manslaughter. The judge in the case accepted a plea agreement reached between the defense and prosecution and sentenced Steven Fay, 58, […]

The Russian captain of a Sukhoi Superjet 100 that crashed in Indonesia last May inhibited the airplane’s terrain-warning system after receiving what he apparently judged to be a spurious nuisance alert, crash investigators say. Indonesian investigators said the Superjet’s TAWS sounded a warning 38 seconds before the twinjet slammed into a mountain in the jungle […]

The 1969 Learjet 25 that crashed in the early morning of December 9, killing singer Jenni Rivera and six others, was owned by Las Vegas-based Starwood Management LLC. But the company said the fatal flight was not a charter. Rather, it was described as a final demonstration flight in anticipation of Rivera purchasing the jet […]

Jenni Rivera, the 43-year-old Mexican-American singer and performer, was killed in a Learjet 25 crash over the weekend about 70 miles south of Monterrey, Mexico. According to the NTSB, which is assisting in the investigation, the accident occurred around 3:30 a.m. local time and claimed the lives of all seven individuals on board. Search and […]

More than a dozen years after the July 2000 crash of an Air France Concorde supersonic transport (SST) outside Paris, a French court will decide today whether to uphold a manslaughter conviction against Continental Airlines. The original ruling, which was appealed, held that a Continental mechanic improperly attached a metal strip to one of the […]

Three men were killed Friday night in a Cessna 172 when the airplane hit a truck on takeoff from Knox County Regional Airport in Maine. After the collision, the airplane reportedly climbed to about 150 feet before banking east and nose-diving into a wooded area, killing 22-year-old David Cheney, 24-year-old Marcelo Rugini and 24-year-old William […]

Over the past several years the FAA has highlighted a few safety concerns designed to stop the most serious mishaps, but the agency has pursued none of these efforts as energetically as it has worked toward putting an end to runway accidents, a focus we applaud. It’s an effort that, unfortunately, has shown spotty results, […]