Accidents

About 120 nautical miles separate Winchester and Lynchburg, Virginia. But even a nearby destination may prove strangely difficult to reach. The pilot-owner of a 1964 Cessna 210D, a 50-year-old physician with about 300 hours, left Winchester for Lynchburg, alone, a few minutes before 8 o’clock on an April evening. He had made the same trip, […]

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) has released its first docket of factual information surrounding the May midair collision of a Beech Bonanza and Piper Cherokee near Warrenton, Virginia, involving airplanes owned by an NTSB and FAA employee. The NTSB has asked the Canadian agency to take the lead in the investigation to avoid […]

The NTSB on Monday singled out deteriorated parts as the probable cause behind the Reno crash that left 11 dead and more than 60 injured last September when the P-51 Galloping Ghost, piloted by veteran pilot Jimmy Leeward, went out of control following a structural failure of the trim tab system. According to the investigative […]

In February 2010, a CESSNA T337G Skymaster made a low pass over the runway at Farmingdale, New Jersey. As it pulled up, a six-foot piece of the right wing broke away; the ensuing crash, before the eyes of friends and relatives for whose benefit the pass was being made, killed all five aboard. In August […]

The NTSB this week opened the accident docket for the Reno crash that rocked the nation last September, providing the public further insight into what caused the highly modified P-51 known as Galloping Ghost to crash into a crowd of spectators at the show, killing 11 and injuring more than 60. Among the more than […]

Two Bell Helicopter pilots flying a Bell 214ST on a test flight last week walked away unharmed after making an emergency landing in a Texas cotton field. The pilots reportedly made a textbook emergency landing, only to have the helicopter tip onto its side when one of the wheels dug into the soft dirt. Video […]

Investigators trying to determine what caused the deadly crash of a Sukhoi Superjet 100 in the jungle mountains of Indonesia say controllers cleared the airplane below the minimum safe altitude for the area minutes before the jet slammed into a mountain shrouded in low clouds. Sukhoi had planned a 30-minute demonstration flight on May 9 […]

The NTSB is investigating a preflight incident over the weekend in which falling debris from a Boeing 787 engine triggered a grass fire at Charleston International Airport in South Carolina. There were no injuries as a result of Saturday’s fire, but analysts are now looking into what caused the GEnx engine failure and whether an […]

Considering how rare single-seat twins are outside the military, it’s remarkable how little information about N72TZ can be found on the Internet. The NTSB’s report on the fatal outcome of its first flight provides scant detail about the airplane itself. It seems, from bits and pieces mined here and there, to have been one of […]

In the final report issued Thursday on the Air France 447 crash that killed 228 people in May 2009, investigators said the pilots were “completely surprised” by technical problems experienced at high altitude and engaged in increasingly de-structured actions until suffering “the total loss of cognitive control of the situation.” The report, issued by the […]