Weather

Here’s an emerging safety story that hasn’t received much attention: Fatal accidents caused by weather are declining. Nobody should be popping Champagne bottles just yet, but there is enough data to suggest a steady downward trend over the past few years. What’s the cause of this encouraging course reversal? There are probably many, but the […]

The FAA is warning drone operators to fly clear of areas that have been affected by Hurricane Florence. According to statements released by the FAA on its website and Twitter, flying drones in the impacted regions could interfere with local, state, and federal recovery missions. Drone pilots caught breaking this rule could be slapped with […]

If we’d written this story a few decades ago, the list of weather resources for pilots would have been rather short — a flight service station briefing either in person or perhaps by phone, and the evening weather report on TV or the radio. Pilots thought they’d really made progress when the direct user access terminal system […]

Johnson County Executive Airport (KOJC) in Olathe, Kansas, suffered major damage after a severe weather event tore through the area on Monday night. An entire row of T-hangars was completely demolished and the airplanes that were parked inside were piled randomly near the site where the hangar used to protect them. Around a dozen other […]

The atmosphere in our normally gray conference room was, well, colorful, and the manager was wishing he hadn’t OK’d my idea for an informal meeting with local traffic helicopter and fixed-wing pilots after a recent and highly publicized accident. On that frigid, foggy morning, a pilot and a female ­reporter lifted off in a Bell […]

People like to ask, “What was your favorite flight?” There are so many, I wouldn’t know how to choose. But ask me to choose my least favorite flight, and I can tell you in a heartbeat. It started on a beautiful February day. My buddy Shaun decided to join me. We made a lot of […]

Honeywell is working on adding crowdsourced weather data to its Weather Information Service app. Honeywell says the new capability, called Connected Radar, will deliver the most complete view of weather along an aircraft’s route by aggregating weather data from radar systems onboard other aircraft in flight. Connected Radar could be particularly helpful to helicopter pilots […]

Pilots operating aircraft into known icing conditions must always guard against an encounter with super-cooled large water droplets (SLD), blotches of water that exist in a liquid state until they strike something solid, such as an airframe, and turn to ice. SLDs were virtually unknown until they were blamed for the 1994 crash of an […]

Cessna 162 Zionsville, Indiana / Injuries: 2 Minor The flight instructor reported that, due to known thunderstorms northwest of the airport, he planned to remain in the traffic pattern during the instructional flight. Automated weather equipment located at the airport also reported lightning in the vicinity of the airport immediately before the flight departed with […]

A group of NASA satellites was successfully launched this morning in a rocket deployed from the belly of a modified airliner. The Orbital ATK Pegasus XL rocket carrying the satellites, which NASA will use to study hurricanes from space, was deployed over the Atlantic at about 39,000 feet from its carrier aircraft, the L-1011 Stargazer. […]