Aviation Safety

Upset Prevention and Recovery Training (UPRT) provider Aviation Performance Solutions (APS) said on April 28 it is now offering a fresh line-up of free and paid online UPRT course options. Participating pilots can credit costs of the paid courses toward their future on-site UPRT programs. The new classes are targeted specifically at pilots impacted by […]

Some 100 FAA control towers around the US will soon have their operational hours temporarily culled due to significant COVID-19-based reductions in local air traffic. The agency said in a news release, “Making these adjustments allows for continued safe operations throughout the national airspace system while minimizing health risks to our workforce.” The control towers […]

My instructor was in the seat behind me. He was always yelling at me. This time, he was yelling that I needed more rudder when I used aileron. I was a teenager. I thought he was mad at me. I know now he was just trying to be heard over the ambient airplane noise. The […]

Pilots are endowed with the right to take risks.

Some element of human interaction, or lack of one, is responsible for nearly 70 percent of all aircraft accidents. Most of those involve violating a least one FAR, like flying a VFR aircraft into IFR weather, busting minimums on an approach, or a pilot flying when common sense said they weren’t in physical shape to […]

Both the FAA and the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) recently issued airworthiness directives to operators of Gulfstream’s fly-by-wire aircraft, with an additional warning of potential applicability to the company’s G500/ G600 fleet. The initial ADs were issued against the G650/G650ER, G500 and G600 fleet regarding continued flight after a flight control surface shutdown. […]

The FAA last week ruled the Collings Foundation could no longer accept money from people who wanted to ride on the organization’s World War II aircraft. The ruling included a critical look at the NTSB and the agency’s finding following the October 2, 2019, crash of the foundation’s B-17G, “Nine O Nine” at Bradley International […]

The cover story in The New York Times magazine for September 22, 2019, was entitled, “What Really Brought Down the Boeing 737 Max?” The writer, William Langewiesche—son of the sainted author of Stick and Rudder, Wolfgang Langewiesche—is a veteran of Flying, an experienced pilot, and a thorough and technically savvy researcher of his wide-ranging articles […]

After reading, rereading and ruminating over an article on the direction of relative wind as affected by slips and skids, I still wasn’t getting it. Because I don’t have Peter Garrison’s number, I called another friend who has written extensively about all things aeronautical, and as expected, he patiently dumbed it down to where even […]

When an accident’s cause is not easily found.