Lane Wallace

The snow level in the Oakland hills dropped to about 1,500 feet the other day, a description that makes sense only in mountainous areas at the edges of winter, or in California pretty much all of the time. Since it’s almost never cold enough for snow to survive at sea level, snow in California is […]

In 1991, Bobby Bishop and his father were operating a skydiving operation out of Celina, Texas. They had a Cessna 182, a Pilatus PC-6 Porter, a DC-3 and a de Havilland Caribou. But they wanted something in between the Porter and the DC-3/Caribou size aircraft. A de Havilland Twin Otter didn’t seem cost-effective, and the […]

When is the best time for a primary student to do ground-school work? Before starting flying lessons? At the same time? Or after getting the basic skills mastered? Flying asked two nationally recognized flight instructors to weigh in on what they’d recommend regarding ground school. Both agreed that the best option is a syllabus that […]

When I was 24, I decided to try to get in shape by jogging. There was a 7K road race coming up in Louisville, Kentucky, where I was living at the time, so my friend Kirk and I decided we’d set ourselves the goal of getting in shape for the run. Kirk was a pharmaceutical […]

Hooper Bay, Alaska, might not be quite the end of the earth but, as the saying goes, you can probably see it from there. It’s a tiny town halfway up the western Alaskan coast, north of the Aleutian Islands, and the 1,200 people who live there actually can see Russia from their back doors. In […]

At first glance the main changes in the new Cessna Recreational/Private Pilot Training Course appear to be the fact that it’s now an online course and that the course includes specific videos and graphics pertaining to the new Cessna SkyCatcher. But while those features are significant, they are not the biggest or most significant improvements […]

The Greeks would have had a name for it, I imagine. Not quite a full tragedy, because there were moments of greatness. But it’s a complex memory that I still can’t easily categorize. So when my friend Pat called and asked what should have been a couple of simple questions, I had no easy or […]

“It’s like flying an airplane without four of your five senses,” says NASA test pilot Mark Pestana. “You can’t smell the fuel, feel the vibration or hear any noises.” Pestana is sitting in the “cockpit” of the unmanned aircraft system (UAS) Ikhana — a civilian version of General Atomics’ MQ-9 Reaper, which is a follow-on […]

“Holy Cow, it goes on forever!” exclaimed my friend’s 16-year-old son, Connor, who was experiencing his first Oshkosh. He stared wide-eyed at the endless field of planes as we moved along the flight line from the homebuilts to the classics, to the antiques, to the ultralights, to the amphibians — almost halfway to the seaplane […]

Being an aunt is not the same thing as being a parent. Aside from some obvious differences, including the level of exhaustion involved, the two roles create very different instincts and perspectives. When my sister Gail’s kids were toddlers, she was constantly saying things like: “Watch that corner. Tyler might hit his head on it.” […]