Accidents

There is plenty of pressure in life these days. Anyone who has been laid off knows how real the pressure is to find another job. When your boss says, “You’d better get this done by 2 p.m.,” the pressure can be intense, especially when it realistically should take at least until 4 p.m. to complete […]

A Lufthansa jet with 286 passengers on board had to slam on its brakes during takeoff from JFK to avoid a near-collision with an EgyptAir jet this past week, according to the FAA.** ** The incident occurred Monday night, shortly after an Airbus A340 operated by Lufthansa was cleared for takeoff on Runway 22R at […]

The NTSB’s top 10 list of wanted improvements this year prominently includes the poor safety record of general aviation. ** ** “The United States has not had a fatal large commercial aviation accident since February 2009,” said the NTSB in a release highlighting its concerns over GA safety. “Each year,” the release stated, “hundreds of […]

The aircraft owner and pilot who only two days earlier had a BRS whole-airplane recovery parachute system installed in his Cessna 182 survived the crash of his Skylane into tall trees in Holly Springs, Mississippi, on Wednesday, when he deployed the chute system. According to BRS, the company that manufactured the system, the owner was […]

(June 2011) “Shortly after takeoff, I knew we were in trouble — everything looked, acted and sounded OK, but I watched the vertical speed indicator drop to zero. Knowing we had taken off from a strip located down in a mountain valley, that’s not a good thing. It was just after dusk, so I couldn’t […]

Ten months after a de Havilland Turbo Otter amphibious floatplane carrying Senator Ted Stevens crashed in mountainous Alaskan terrain, killing Stevens and four others, the NTSB is pressing the FAA to reevaluate the issuance of medicals to pilots with a history of stroke. The issue took on importance after NTSB investigators discovered the accident pilot […]

__A search for the word hypoxia in NTSB accident reports for the past decade turns up just 15 occurrences. Of these, five do not involve our usual understanding of hypoxia as incapacitation due to protracted exposure to high altitude without supplemental oxygen; the references are, instead, to carbon monoxide poisoning from a leaky muffler, elderly […]

The release of preliminary flight data and cockpit voice recorder data from the miraculously recovered “black boxes” of Air France 447 opened the floodgates of press and online discussion. Amid all this chatter, the term “deep stall” often popped up. Did Air France 447 experience a deep stall? The short answer is no. It was […]

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is looking into an incident in which two regional jets came within just a few hundred feet of each other while crossing paths at Chicago O’Hare International Airport last week.** ** The event occurred around 9:30 a.m. on Monday, May 16, when an Embraer ERJ-145 operated by ExpressJet Airlines […]

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) on Tuesday blamed “pilot unresponsiveness” for last August’s crash of a de Havilland Turbo Otter amphibious floatplane in remote Alaska that killed pilot Terry Smith and four passengers including former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens. The Board said a flight surgeon’s decision to reinstate Smith’s first-class medical certificate without a […]