Flight Safety Detectives

We bring you to AirVenture 2025 in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. This annual event attracts hundreds of thousands of aerospace professionals, aerospace enthusiasts, and their families for a unique aviation experience. John Goglia, Greg Feith, and Todd Curtis talk about the amazing quality and quantity of aircraft at the show. Hear about historical and cutting-edge aircraft on display and in flight and the p...

India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) has issued an appeal to the public and the media to stop speculating about the cause of the Air India crash. This comes less than a week after the agency released a preliminary report that raises more questions than provides answers.  The Flight Safety Detectives share this latest development in an investigation that has been poorly handled fro...

A Cessna Citation crash in March that killed all aboard appears to be the result of bad pilot decision making. Responding to the interest of numerous listeners, John Goglia and Todd Curtis dig into what happened. The pilot was completing a cross-country flight in the early morning hours of March 22, 2025. He took off after 11 pm the previous night in Teterboro, NJ, and crashed hours later in San D...

Former US Air Force and NASA Flight Surgeon Dr. Gregory Rodgers discusses first-hand experiences with the NASA space shuttle program. Among his efforts, he helped change NASA procedures that endangered shuttle crews.  Among his efforts to improve space safety, Dr. Rogers tried to convince NASA to add a repair kit to Shuttle missions to deal with the ongoing issue of protective heat-resistant tiles...

Yesterday’s special episode generated a lot of questions about the Air India preliminary report. Facts in hand, the Flight Safety Detectives tackle them head on. The preliminary report does not identify any issues with the aircraft that directly contributed to the crash. It focuses on the actions taken by the flight crew.  Hear more detail on why the design of fuel cutoff switches makes it unlikel...

The preliminary report on the June 12, 2025, fatal crash of an Air India 787 is most notable for what is unstated, vague, and even misleading. The detectives start with the omission of who turned off the engines just after takeoff. Their list of unanswered questions grows from there.  This crash appears to not be an accident, but rather an intentional act by at least one member of the flight crew....

India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau plans to issue a preliminary report on the June 12, 2025, fatal crash of an Air India 787 tomorrow. Todd Curtis, Greg Feith, and John Goglia detectives have serious concerns about the credibility of this investigation and the upcoming preliminary report. They discuss several irregularities with the investigation, including the unusual decision not to...

An update on the Air India crash investigation, with focus on the flight data recorders installed and recovered from the aircraft. John explains the identical dual flight data and voice recorders installed on the plane. Viewer questions led to further investigation and clarification of the Enhanced Airborne Flight Recorders (EAFR) installed on the plane. In other news, the NTSB has issued more tha...

AirVenture 2025 is approaching fast. With it comes the transformation of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, into the busiest airport in the world. Pilots flying in must be prepared for the unique air traffic procedures.  In this episode, aviation experts Greg Feith, Todd Curtis, and John Goglia take us behind the scenes of the annual event and discuss the critical safety protocols all pilots must follow. The tea...

Greg Feith, John Goglia and Todd Curtis find the lack of information emerging about the Air India 787 crash surprising. They wonder if safety critical information is being withheld from the aviation community and the public at large. The flight data recorder (FDR) is in the US for analysis, while the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) remains in India. The CVR and FDR are typically read out simultaneous...

Todd Curtis and John Goglia share the unfolding information surrounding a October 20, 2024 crash of an air tour R44 helicopter into a radio tower in Houston. The NTSB investigation continues. The air tour helicopter apparently crashed into the radio tower while the pilot in command was reading back a traffic advisory about a second helicopter in the vicinity. The second helicopter was operated by...

Greg Feith, Todd Curtis, and John Goglia are fresh from media interviews on the Air India crash. They regroup here to share their insights with the Flight Safety Detectives audience. An Air India 787 crashed in Ahmedabad, India on June 12. The detectives want to put the brakes on the media, aviation commentators and social media posters who are providing bad information about the cause of the cras...

Nathan Fielder needed an aviation expert for Season 2 of the series "The Rehearsal" so he tapped Flight Safety Detectives’ own John Goglia. John’s recommendations for how crew resource management (CRM) can reduce aviation accidents became the focus of the season. John discusses how he was approached to be in the show, how he didn't have a clear idea of the direction it would take, and the unexpect...

Jim Croce died in a plane crash more than 50 years ago. Determining what caused the 1973 crash is challenging. This episode also covers an event where no one was flying a Lufthansa plane. The only surviving document from the plane crash that killed Jim Croce is less than a page long, leaving many questions unanswered. The investigation was likely carried out by an investigator who was outside of N...

Recent air traffic control issues at Newark Liberty Airport and the recent dismissal of an NTSB board member signal significant aviation safety issues in the US. Since early May, Newark Airport has experienced significant flight disruptions due to radar outages and shortages of air traffic controllers. The current FAA administrator blames the previous administration for these problems. What’s the...

A 200-pound chunk of ice came crashing through the roof of a house in February. What was the source? Todd Curtis, Greg Feith, and John Goglia analyze an unusual event involving a large chunk of ice from the sky. The ice fell out of a clear sky and crashed through the metal roof of a home in Florida.  After an investigation, the FAA found no evidence that a plane was the source of the ice. Chemical...

Helicopters and offshore oil platform operations can be a deadly combination. John Goglia and Todd Curtis discuss two accidents to illustrate aviation safety concerns. In a 2010 accident discussed, maintenance and managerial failures resulted in minor damage and no injuries because of the pilot's skill. Another is a fatal accident that killed all on board due to the pilot not following the helicop...

A pilot with many hours of experience and an instructor rating died following the bad decision to fly his newly purchased airplane without first understanding how the aircraft systems operate. He also did not review the logbooks or have the plane looked over after 10 years sitting idle. The pilot had purchased a Piper PA-30 Twin Comanche. Key facts in the NTSB report and public docket show that th...

An experienced pilot with multiple ratings lost control of his Mitsubishi MU-2 aircraft and crashed after a missed approach. Greg Feith, Todd Curtis and John Goglia look at the facts surrounding this incident that killed six. ADS-B information broadcast by the plane shows a missed approach followed by an unusual second attempt. Rather than flying the published missed approach, air traffic controll...

Todd Curtis and John Goglia discuss a fatal air tour helicopter crash near New York City that killed all six people on board, including a family of five from Spain. They examine several witness videos plus ADS-S data in their analysis. The crash happened on April 10, 2025, three days before this episode was recorded. The flight was apparently routine until the helicopter suddenly rotated and crash...

Inflight icing may have been a factor in the recent fatal crash of a TBM 700. Relying on publicly available ADS-B data and video from a nearby home, Todd Curtis, John Goglia, and Greg Feith discuss icing and other issues that may have affected the pilot and the aircraft. The TBM 700, a single-engine turboprop aircraft, crashed outside of Minneapolis. The aircraft was expected to land at the Anoka...

The preliminary accident report on the February crash of the Endeavor Air CRJ-900 in Toronto, Canada has just been released. John Goglia, Todd Curtis and Greg Feith examine the facts provided as well as the gaps in information that still exist. The reported descent rate at touchdown was very close to the descent rate the detectives estimated based on a screen grab taken from a witness video. While...

The investigation of a 2023 Beechcraft Bonanza in Brazil led to an unusual recommendation. The Brazilian authorities find that an engine trend monitoring program could have prevented the accident. In this event, the pilot made a successful off-field landing after the engine failed. The investigation found that the failure was due to a leak in the mechanical pump and fuel controller. The aircraft w...

Travel journalist Peter Greenberg joins Todd Curtis, Greg Feith, and John Goglia for a wide-ranging look at current aviation topics. Peter is a longtime safety advocate and host of the PBS series "The Travel Detective.” Hear as these four experts cover the hottest topics in aviation safety. Ironically, the U.S. has just marked the 30 safest years since commercial aviation began. Yet, recent incide...

An examination of the preliminary NTSB report of a February 10, 2025 crash of a Learjet 35 that killed the pilot. Todd Curtis, Greg Feith, and John Goglia examine the issues with the landing gear that caused the accident. The flight crew was conducting a normal approach and was apparently unaware that the left main landing gear had failed. Witness photos taken during the approach showed that the l...