Accidents

The NTSB has asked Canada’s Transportation Safety Board to take over the investigation of a midair collision over Virginia between two light airplanes owned by employees of the FAA and NTSB. On Monday afternoon a Piper Cherokee registered to an FAA employee and a Beechcraft Bonanza owned by an NTSB employee collided in flight near […]

Here’s a heartening statistic: To judge from an unscientific search of NTSB accident records, fewer than one in eight fuel-exhaustion accidents during the period 2006 through 2010 were fatal. Notice that these are the accidents that come to the attention of the NTSB because they involve injury or property damage of a certain magnitude. We […]

Preliminary analysis of the cockpit voice recorder from the** Sukhoi SuperJet 100 that crashed into the side of a volcano** in Indonesia two weeks ago showed no sign of aircraft system malfunctions, according to a statement released by the aircraft manufacturer. United Aircraft Corporation, the parent company of Sukhoi, went on to say the CVR […]

All 16 passengers and crew aboard a helicopter that ditched in the North Sea on Thursday have been rescued, according to Coast Guard officials. The incident, which happened about 25 miles east of Aberdeen, Scotland, involved a Bond EC 225 Super Puma that was transporting offshore oil workers to two North Sea rigs. According to […]

When it comes to aircraft modifications, things happen in Alaska that don’t happen in the lower 48. Here is one of those things, a Super Cub with at least a few mods from the look of it, the most noticeable of which is a very long landing gear extension. Now, what exactly is the reason […]

The wreckage of a Sukhoi SuperJet 100 that disappeared yesterday during a demonstration flight in Indonesia has been found in a remote mountainous region south of the capital city of Jakarta, authorities said Thursday. According to a Reuters report, the crash site was located by a search and rescue helicopter that identified debris on the […]

The morning dawned misty and overcast; even low-lying areas to the east, which the marine stratus layer often did not reach, were reporting 100 feet and a quarter-mile. By noon, however, conditions at the airport had improved to 1,800 broken, 2,800 overcast and 10 miles visibility. A Cirrus SR22, whose destination lay to the east, […]

A veteran air traffic control manager has retired in the wake of an FAA probe into an unreported error that triggered a near collision between a Japan Airlines 767 and a UPS MD11 in January. The two aircraft were approximately 15 miles out on approach to land at Honolulu International Airport when a rookie controller […]

U.S. civil aviation accidents rose slightly in 2011, with the sharpest increase coming from Part 135 on-demand charter operations, according to recent stats released by the NTSB. While the number of GA accidents grew a slight 2 percent, the number of accidents per 100,000 flight hours actually decreased somewhat from 6.63 in 2010 to 6.51 […]

After seven months of examining data from the hypersonic HTV-2 vehicle that was lost during a test flight over the Pacific last August, DARPA says it has zeroed in on the vehicle’s skin, and its inability to withstand the stresses of incredibly fast speeds, as the source of the malfunction. According to DARPA’s report, ground […]