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Pilot’s Discretion: Taxi at Large Airports Like a Pro

An iPad can be a pilot's best friend during one of the most confusing parts of any flight: after landing at a busy, unfamiliar airport. Jerry Pomales
Gemini Sparkle

Key Takeaways:

  • The iPad and its ecosystem of aviation apps represent a significant technological advancement, considerably improving pilots' safety and situational awareness over the past two decades.
  • A key area where the iPad enhances safety and reduces stress is during taxiing, a critical phase of flight often made complex by busy or unfamiliar airports.
  • Features such as geo-referenced airport diagrams, integrated NOTAMs, runway verification overlays, and automated taxi alerts provide pilots with superior surface situational awareness.
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Over the course of your flying career you’ll likely experience several technological advances that will change the way you fly. In the early years of aviation, these came in the form of new airframe design and propulsion innovations, such as the transition from tailwheel to tricycle landing gear and turbojet engines. Next came the development of sophisticated avionics, providing pilots with the HSI, loran and RNAV direct-to navigation. The biggest leap in this category took place in the mid-1990s, when GPS was opened up for civilian use, unlocking the modern form of navigation that we all depend on today.

Bret Koebbe

Bret Koebbe is a flight instructor and oversees the production of pilot-training courses and mobile apps for Sporty’s Pilot Shop. He flies for fun in a 1963 Piper Aztec and professionally in a Cessna Citation.

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