Aviation News

American Airlines Jet Scrapes Wingtip Landing at Charlotte: Pilots May Have Violated Procedures

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On Sunday night, an American Airlines jet scraped a wingtip while landing in poor visibility at the Charlotte, N.C. Airport, according to an article in the online version of the Wall Street Journal. It state that the NTSB is “expected to look at whether fatigue may have played a role in the performance of the pilots. They had been on duty for some 14 hours before the botched landing, according to preliminary internal airline data.”

Northwest Airlines Flight 188 Pilot Explains How Plane Overshot Minneapolis

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Ever since the pilots of NWA 188 overflew their Minneapolis destination, speculation has been rampant about what actually happened in the cockpit. It was widely assumed that the pilots had fallen asleep. Their subsequent explanation that they’d been out of radio communication for 78 minutes because they became distracted while using their laptops seemed strange enough that it might indeed be true. Still, most pilots wondered how both pilots could have totally lost situational awareness for so long.

Drunk Airline Pilot Video – United Pilot Arrested in London

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On Monday, British police arrested a United Airlines pilot after he failed a breathalyzer test. The pilot, who apparently had already boarded a Boeing 767, was preparing the fly the aircraft from London’s Heathrow airport to Chicago. Scotland Yard reports that they charged the 51-year old pilot, Erwin Washington of Lakewood, CO, with having too much alcohol in his system while working as a member of aviation staff. The flight was cancelled and the plane’s 124 passengers were rebooked on other flights.

This incident comes on top of a series of recent pilot lapses that…

Video Shows a How a Laptop Blocks Instruments on Airbus

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The strange case of Northwest Flight 188 that we reported last week got even stranger Monday after the NTSB released details of their interviews with the pilots. Jon Ostrower of FlightBlogger has released a YouTube video that shows the pull out tray available for pilots to use while working in an Airbus A320 cockpit. As he points out in the video, placing a laptop on the pull out tray would block a pilot’s view of the cockpit instruments.

Northwest Airlines Flight 188 Pilots Asleep at Controls?

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The professionalism of two Northwest Airlines pilots who overflew their Minneapolis destination by 150 miles is seriously in question. While all the facts are not known, it’s quite possible that the pilots fell asleep at the controls. Anyone can make a mistake. But pilots in particular need to be accountable for their mistakes.

Auto-Landing Capability Demonstrated on GA Aircraft

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Today, Aurora Flight Services announced that they have successfully demonstrated fully autonomous takeoffs and landings in their Cessna 337 aircraft. The flights were conducted with a safety pilot and test engineer on board near the company’s Manassas, Virginia headquarters. The company manufactures state-of-the-art unmanned aerial systems and components for the scientific research, defense and homeland … Read more