You would think pilots would have learned their lesson about messing with thunderstorms, especially landing in or near them. I mean, we’re almost 40 years beyond the defining moment in understanding wind shear and microbursts, the August 1985 crash of Delta Flight 191, a Lockheed L-1011, in Dallas, Texas. Add to that, many aircraft now […]

I started learning to fly at the quaint, waterfront Albert-Whitted Airport in St. Petersburg, Fla., back in the 1980s. It was a great place to fly—beautiful scenery, plenty of options of places to go for practice landings and a reasonably easy airspace set up to facilitate painless statewide cross-country flights. There was one caveat, however. Just […]