aviation safety Posts

An airport’s airside, where multi-million dollar aircraft park, is an unpredictable and potentially hazardous workspace for employees with a variety of jobs, regardless of the weather conditions.  Approximately 27,000 ramp accidents occur each year,…

Wait a second. “You want me to analyze the crash landings in a half dozen movies? And then tell you if they’re realistic?” I asked the Vanity Fair producer. Her response was quick. “Yes.”  I’ve had a few whacky assignments over the…

My memory of September 11, 2001, is, at best, a blur except for the images. The scenes, however, are indelibly etched in my mind. It was a sunny morning with temperatures in the low 70s and not a cloud in the sky. A perfect day, I thought. I’d just …

NTSB Hearing Room It’s understandable that even the geekiest of airplane geeks didn’t have enough time in their week to listen to the more than 30 hours of testimony created when the NTSB began its recent public investigation of the events surroundi…

Pilots get rusty when they don’t fly often. No matter whether they hold a private pilot certificate or an ATP. Even a professional pilot with thousands of hours in their logbook can easily find themselves behind the power curve in an airplane. Stayi…

“The performance of the system depends on how the parts fit, not how they act taken separately.” Doctor Russell Ackoff – American organizational theorist, consultant, a pioneer in the field of operations research, systems thinking and management sci…

Capt. Beatty A disinformation campaign falsely links “DEI” to airline accidents – let’s check the facts. By Capt. Jenny Beatty There is no extant literature examining this question, so I accessed various sources to compile available data. I research…

Safe Initial Climbs Can Mean Tradeoffs A pilot’s first takeoff in a jet airplane is a true rite of passage, almost as eye opening as a first solo. Push those power levers forward, and a pilot’s body is soon pressed back against the seat. That feedba…

Note: This story was corrected on August 10th at 10:23 am, thanks to the help of a sharp-eyed reader. Making an ATR-72 Spin I wasn’t in Brazil on Friday afternoon, but I saw the post on Twitter or X (or whatever you call it) showing a Brazil ATR-72…

Decades ago, when I learned to fly, it was well-known that a commercial co-pilot/first officer was allowed to occupy the right seat of a transport airplane only if they’d proven themselves subservient enough to understand that the guy in the left se…

It should go without saying that flying is a dynamic pursuit, so that means that learning and being able to proficiently perform the skills (and understand the knowledge that supports them) is not a one-and-done endeavor whose conclusion is the issu…

In the days before electronic flight bags, the duffels filled with the necessary performance, operational, and navigation paper were a weight and balance line item, especially with a full set of instrument approach plates. When formatted as electron…

With climate change continuing the slow and steady march to ever warmer records, 2023 set a new record. (I can hear 2024 softly asking us to hold its beer.) “After seeing the 2023 climate analysis, I have to pause and say that the findings are astou…

One week from today, on Monday April 8, as the moon’s shadow slides across the eastern third of the United States, the Great North American Eclipse will darken the skies over 458 US airports that are within 50 miles of the eclipse’s centerline track…

Given the state of the world, GPS spoofing has been in the news with unsettling frequency. Transmitting a counterfeit GPS signal to override the real deal serves the real purpose of guiding aerial, maritime, or terrestrial vehicles where someone oth…

As a word merchant and an aviator, words are important. They are the foundation of communication, and in many instances they can be the difference between life and death. “Hold Short” is but one example. Equally important is our semantic understandi…

By Rob Mark An early scene in An Officer and a Gentleman, the 1982 movie about U.S. Navy recruits slogging their way through officer candidate school, has granite-tough Marine Gunnery Sgt. Foley (actor Lou Gossett Jr.) confronting candidate Zack May…

Given the traffic seen on my daily stroll around town, except for the EAA AirVenture Oshkosh late summer interlude, the sky over Omro seems to be a no-fly zone. When the wind is right, I’ll see a regional jet whining its way north to Appleton Intern…

October kudos to the editors of NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) Callback for selecting atypical reports for their periodic “What Would You Have Done?” issue. In all the years I’ve been reading the selected scenarios to challenge and e…

With autumn’s annual bird migrations underway, on October 3, the FAA issued a 4-page Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin 21-17 addressing Rotorcraft Bird Strike Protection and Mitigation. It also introduces the voluntary Rotorcraft Safety Pro…

To maintain my social skills, on Fridays I hike the Wiouwash Trail for 2.46 miles from the trailhead just east of Winneconne to the Bare Bones Brewery, which is trailside where the former interurban railbed enters Oshkosh, Wisconsin, on its northwes…

Like many aviators, I’m a weather geek. The internet has sustained this addiction, and since 2002, The National Weather Services Aviation Weather Center has been the one weather product I cannot do without. And it will become more potent next month …

Back in the day, airports without air traffic controllers working to maintain order and predictable behavior from the pilots flying to and from it were often referred to as “uncontrolled” because they did not have an air traffic control tower, or th…

The North Atlantic compaction of the Titan submersible on its Titanic adventure has generated some interesting media efforts that approach the mishap from various angles. It has a lot in common with airborne adventures. The only difference is the vi…