October 2010

An instrument rating entitles a pilot to legally navigate an aircraft when the weather is bad enough that he can’t see outside.  A pilot who is not instrument-rated must always stay out of the clouds. If the weather is such that he can’t do that, he must stay on the ground.  

The training required to obtain an instrument rating is extensive.  In most cases, it takes a pilot longer and costs him more to obtain the rating than it did for him to get his pilot’s license in the firstContinue Reading Cirrus Crash Near Agua Dulce: Pilot Not Instrument-Rated

According to the NTSB, most aviation accidents are caused by pilot error. But avNTSB Investigates for Probable Causeiation lawyers know that as many as half the cases that the NSTB says were the result of "pilot error" simply weren’t.

The NTSB does its best to get an accident’s probable cause right. The trouble is that, in almost every one of…

Many think that, after it completes an investigation, the NTSB can order a stop to the dangerous practice that it determined was the cause of the aviation accident.  Not so.  The NTSB has no regulatory power at all. The only thing the NTSB can do after an investigation is make a safety recommendation and hope that the FAA…