Lane Wallace

Until last weekend, the last time I’d had a mettwurst was 1987. What, you might ask, is a mettwurst? Ah. It’s a spicy, little-known relative of the bratwurst that’s only available, as far as I’ve ever determined, in a small radius around southern Ohio. I mention the mettwurst only because sometimes, like the smell of […]

I remember, back when I lived in Kentucky, watching news coverage one evening of a midair collision that had occurred that day. The TV news reporter was giving his report on the accident while standing in front of a tied-down Piper Archer at the local airport. The Archer had foam-backed, silver, reflective sunshades in all […]

If students aren’t sure whether they will end up flying an airplane with glass cockpit technology or not for training, which is better — transitioning to glass, or transitioning to analog instruments? Marty Blaker is a CFI who, as vice president of avionics course development for King Schools, oversaw the development of its Garmin G1000 […]

_June 2010 _ THE THREE ROOMS THAT constitute the offices of the Aereon Corp. are tucked away on the second floor of a brick building near the Princeton University campus. The narrow hallway is lined with gray doors, many of which have hand-lettered business signs on them. You have to know the Aereon offices are […]

May 2010 — We asked two nationally recognized experts in flight training to weigh in on the effectiveness of “accelerated” flight training — those weekend, 10-day or short-term immersion courses that offer flight ratings in short periods of time. Their opinions differed somewhat — John King is a more unabashed fan of accelerated learning than […]

The hat is familiar — A cream-colored baseball cap with the capital letters VAF (for “Van’s Air Force”) embroidered across the front of it. What’s eye-catching is the rest of the outfit: an immaculate black tux, with tails, worn by a smiling man cradling a Stradivarius violin in his arms. Oh, yes. And then there’s […]

April 2010 Flying cross-country by visual flight rules is a far less precise endeavor than flying IFR (see Robert Goyer’s IFR Flight Prep: A Whole New Game April 2010 article for more info). As a former Navy fighter pilot turned GA pilot once put it, VFR flight consists of “sniff-checking your way through weather” –– […]

Q: If a non-U.S. citizen wants to take flight training here in the United States, what kind of visa or visas is required? What are the rules, and what’s the best way to go about getting the appropriate visa? **A:__ **The best answer to this came from Andre Maye, a pilot and vice president of […]

The way I see it, Angelina Jolie and I have a lot in common. We’re both women pilots who own our own airplanes. We’ve both flown with Air Serv International in Africa. We’ve both spent time with Darfur refugees. And, as of one recent Friday evening, I can say with all truthfulness that we’ve both […]

Corporate aviation has recently received a lot of attention for its intensive efforts flying relief supplies and personnel to ease the devastation in Haiti. John Travolta even filled up his Boeing 707 with supplies and flew it down to help. All of which is terrific. But while colossal disasters and suffering get more attention, many […]