When is an aircraft truly airworthy? The answer is more complicated—and more important—than most pilots and aviation professionals realize.

Aviation safety experts Todd Curtis and John Goglia are joined by aviation attorney Sarah MacLeod and certification expert Mike Borfitz for a fascinating discussion about what airworthiness really means. Is an airplane airworthy simply because it matches an approved design, or does it also have to be safe to fly today?

The panel dives into real-world aviation issues that affect pilots, mechanics, maintenance managers, manufacturers, and regulators every day:

• The difference between regulatory conformity and operational safety
• How maintenance records and paperwork omissions can change critical decisions
• Why organizational pressure can lead to unsafe outcomes
• The role of tolerances, imperfections, and human judgment in aviation maintenance
• Who is accountable when something doesn’t look right
• Why new aviation professionals must learn to speak up, ask questions, and report mistakes

Todd also shares a revealing story from his flying club that demonstrates why every pilot should have access to maintenance information before accepting an aircraft.

Watch now to hear four aviation experts tackle one of the industry’s most misunderstood safety questions—and learn the habits that help keep aircraft, crews, and passengers safe.

Greg Feith, John Goglia, and Todd Curtis, along with returning guest Mike Borfitz dig into the developing facts emerging related to the recent 737 crash in the northern Arabian Sea. As the wreckage is recovered, the Flight Safety Detectives are keen to learn about the plane’s history and maintenance records.

They also discuss a recent incident that appears to be a suicide. A flight instructor exited a Cessna 150 midflight, leaving his student to land the aircraft.

The discussion focuses on pilot mental health and related legislation that is slowly working its way through Congress.

Previous FSD mental health episodes:

• Episode 239: Anxiety in Flight Turns Deadly
• Episode 274: John Goglia Costars in Nathan Fielder’s “The Rehersal” on HBO
• Episode 307: Xyla Foxlin on Pilot Mental Health

The discussion also covers engineering and maintenance careers in aviation. Mike’s engineering career includes work at Boeing and the FAA. Both Mike and John share experiences that made them knowledgeable about aviation and the roles they could play. Todd is also an engineer who has worked on the operational and manufacturing sides of aviation.

​Todd Curtis and John Goglia interview Rohan Guskin an aviation enthusiast whose experiences defy his young age. Guskin started flying at age 14 and is now 16. He is still too young to qualify for a pilot’s license but that has not stopped him from pursuing his passions.

Guskin’s experiences inside and outside the cockpit include an ambitious cross-country flight that took him and his instructor from the San Francisco Bay area, down the California coast, and over the ocean to Catalina Island. He describes the detailed preflight planning and the challenges he encountered during the flight.

John and Todd examine with him a study he is conducting of air traffic separation of IFR and VFR aircraft around several California airports. Guskin has also shared his insights with a statewide association of pilots.
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Listen as they discuss the broader aviation community and the AIAA AVIATION 2026 conference, which took place in San Diego in June 2026. Next year, after Guskin graduates from high school, he aspires to earn an aerospace engineering degree and become an aviation professional.

A cargo Boeing 737 plunges into the Arabian Sea. A seaplane crashes near Manhattan but everyone survives. And an executive jet narrowly misses an unidentified silver object at 16,000 feet.

In this episode of Flight Safety Detectives, aviation safety experts John Goglia and Todd Curtis examine three recent aviation events and explain what they reveal about today’s aviation safety challenges.

The episode begins with the tragic crash of a K2 Airways Boeing 737-400 cargo aircraft that departed Sharjah, UAE, bound for Karachi, Pakistan. The airplane entered a steep dive and crashed into the Arabian Sea, killing all five people on board.

John reviews the aircraft’s long operational history—including its years flying for Aeroflot—and discusses how the aircraft’s age, cargo operation, and the limited public attention to the accident could affect the investigation and what we ultimately learn from it.

John and Todd then turn to the July accident involving a Kodiak 100 seaplane operating near Manhattan. The aircraft suffered a hard landing that appeared to collapse one of its floats. Everyone on board survived without serious injury.

Todd analyzes passenger video from the accident, highlighting what it reveals about the forces involved, the importance of floatplane emergency preparedness, and why several passengers appeared unsure where to locate their personal flotation devices.

The episode concludes with a discussion of a mysterious near miss involving an executive jet flying near New York that encountered an unidentified silver object at approximately 16,000 feet. Todd highlights the need for additional information and what questions investigators still need to answer.
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Join John and Todd as they separate facts from speculation, explore what investigators know so far, and explain the aviation safety lessons emerging from these recent events.

A routine flight turned into a tragedy that raises difficult questions about pilot decision-making, flight school oversight, and the risks of night flying.

In this episode of Flight Safety Detectives, Greg Feith, John Goglia, and Todd Curtis examine the fatal June 2026 crash that claimed the life of a newly certificated private pilot and two passengers. Using available ADS-B flight data and their decades of aviation safety experience, they explore the unusual sequence of events including multiple touch-and-go landings in Ocean City, New Jersey, a climb to nearly 9,000 feet, unexplained changes in speed, and a crash just miles from the intended destination.

​Could the touch-and-go landings have been an attempt to meet FAA night passenger currency requirements? Was another aircraft from the same flight school flying alongside the accident airplane? What role, if any, did the flight school’s practices play in this tragedy?

The hosts carefully separate facts from speculation while highlighting the critical questions investigators should answer. Their discussion provides valuable insight into how experienced accident investigators analyze incomplete evidence and why understanding the “why” behind an accident is essential to improving aviation safety.
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This episode offers a thoughtful, evidence-based look at a heartbreaking event and the lessons that may emerge from it.

​John Goglia and Todd Curtis went live on June 22 to answer listener questions and give to-the-moment updates on several recent aviation safety events.

They cover several recent misadventures:

• A near miss at Boston’s Logan airport involving American Airlines and Delta aircraft.
• A skydiving crash in Missouri
• The crash of a NetJets Cessna 688 that was flying to Auston Texas

​John and Todd offer the known details and share what may have gone wrong in each incident.
They also offer the latest information coming out of the investigation of the accident at LaGuardia airport. They go on to answer several listener questions.

What can NASA safety reports tell us about the state of aviation after the pandemic? In this episode of Flight Safety Detectives, former NTSB Board Member John Goglia and aviation safety analyst Todd Curtis dive into recent trends in NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS), examining how reporting levels for Part 121 and Part 135 operators changed during and after the pandemic.

John and Todd also discuss the fatal June 7, 2026 crash of a Gulfstream G200 in the Dominican Republic. They explore how the investigation may unfold under Dominican authorities and explain why the resources available to an investigative agency don’t necessarily determine the quality of the final findings.

The episode concludes with a deep dive into a 2023 fuel exhaustion accident involving a Cessna 172. After reviewing the NTSB Public Docket, John and Todd found critical background information that never made it into the final report. Their analysis highlights how additional details—including the pilot’s recent passengers and the aircraft’s possible weight at the time of the accident—can provide important context when evaluating pilot decisions and accident outcomes.
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Don’t miss this detailed discussion of accident investigations, safety reporting trends, and the lessons hidden in the details of aviation accident records.

John Goglia and Todd Curtis examine an all-too-common aviation incident: fuel exhaustion.

Two pilots recently took off on a training flight that would start after midnight and end before dawn. They planned 10 takeoffs and landings at a towered airport, a 100-nautical-mile cross-country flight, refueling, and waiting until sunrise to practice additional maneuvers.

Unfortunately, they ran out of fuel short of the refueling stop and had to dodge wind turbines and power lines to safely land on a road. Because there were no damage or injuries, no report was published by the FAA or NTSB.

However, the incident was reported to the NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS). John and Todd use that information to examine what happened and point out that they may have created avoidable dangers by planning to perform a challenging set of tasks for a single flight.
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This episode also demonstrates how to use the ASRS to learn from those who submit reports, including events that could have ended in disaster. This episode could help you avoid this and other common aviation safety issues.

Todd Curtis and John Goglia share their real time research into unapproved parts in aviation. They use the NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) database to do their research.

See what they uncover as they investigate unapproved parts in aviation. They search reports from 1995 and later years to find instances of suspected unapproved or counterfeit parts.

Most of the five cases they dive into are found to be paperwork issues rather than actual fraudulent parts. John adds some historical context, discussing how events like Eastern Airlines going out of business and the U.S. leaving behind a substantial amount of aviation assets after the Vietnam war led to many undocumented parts and helicopter engines entering the global aviation market.
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Learn about the history and issues surrounding unapproved parts in aviation maintenance from two aviation safety insiders.

Can artificial intelligence (AI) make aviation safer? In this episode, Todd Curtis and John Goglia explore ways that AI tools are being used to analyze safety data, identify trends, and improve communication across the aviation industry.

Todd shares a project that uses the AI platform Claude along with reports from NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) database to create a customized safety report modeled after the ASRS CALLBACK publication. The discussion highlights how AI can help aviation professionals uncover valuable insights from large volumes of safety data.

Todd and John discuss how aviation professionals can get better results by understanding how to guide AI tools and evaluate their output.

The conversation also explores how safety management system (SMS) managers can use AI to better understand organizational risks, identify emerging issues, and improve safety decision-making.

Todd demonstrates how AI can transform written content into concise, media-ready sound bites and shares a downloadable resource that viewers can use to create their own custom audio clips.

Whether you’re an aviation professional, safety manager, mechanic, pilot, or simply interested in emerging technology, this episode offers practical examples of how AI may help shape the future of aviation safety.
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Also in this show, John calls out the disservice of incorrect information being shared by one commenter on the UPS crash in Louisville, Kentucky. A prominent aviation safety podcaster who is also an airline pilot repeatedly talks about the #2 engine being affected by foreign object digestion (FOD), a fact not directly supported by the NTSB preliminary report.