Martha King

When John came to in the hospital a number of years ago after a lapse of consciousness, you will appreciate that the very first concern he expressed was for his aviation medical certificate. Perhaps the most significant and deeply personal touchpoint with the FAA for every pilot is the medical certification process. To a pilot, […]

There was nobody to marshal us in as we wheeled into the parking spot. After we shut the old Navajo down and started looking around to see where to go after we got out, a man ran up to the pilot side of the airplane. I opened the little side window and expectantly bent an […]

This normally nontowered airport was probably the busiest it had ever been. The airport needed to land an airplane about every minute and a half to accommodate the arrivals in the time available between sunrise and 10:30 a.m., when everyone wanted to be on the ground. The trick was getting everyone off the runway and […]

It was scary. We were more than a mile from the short runway, skimming the treetops in a Chinese-made Socata Trinidad look-alike. We were so low we couldn’t even see the runway. It took me a little while to figure out what was going on. This was the pilot’s idea of how to make a […]

As they approached the outer marker at ­Buffalo in their Q400 turboprop, Capt. ­Marvin Renslow, 47, and First Officer ­Rebecca Lynne Shaw, 24, had allowed themselves to be distracted by an ­extended conversation about their previous icing experience compared to their current icing conditions. They were now too fast for so close in. About 3 […]

It was a whole new world to us. From the air, John and I saw the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains, the Pacific Ocean, and what was to become our new hometown in California — all on our first cross-country after we got our licenses. We were hooked. From that time on, our lives were […]

The view out the windscreen from 38,000 feet wasn’t really scary, but it was fatiguing. Nexrad confirmed what we were seeing. After our fuel stop in Wichita, Kansas, we would have to pick our way around air-mass thunderstorms in the dark all the way home to California. It had been a hardworking business trip to […]

It was the slightest of rumbles. Both John and I felt it. John, who was at the controls, eased the yoke forward slightly and the rumble stopped. We landed and taxied to the ramp. We had an airplane full of pilots, but no one else had felt the rumble. It was the aerodynamic warning of […]

“You just flew through a military training route.” The controller was agitated. Since whatever had happened had happened, and we were already within 10 miles of Thermal’s nontowered airport, John told the controller we were leaving his frequency to get airport advisories. John then switched our transponder to 1200, the VFR squawk, and changed frequencies. […]

“You can’t teach judgment.” “I’m afraid no amount of ‘risk management’ training is going to change your attitude.” These comments were in response to John’s May column, “Double Trouble at Denver.” John had revealed our incredible series of risk-management failures on a trip in the early ’70s — getting caught in a snowstorm in two separate airplanes […]