Sam Weigel

Sam Weigel gives reviews a headset that a lot of recreational and professional pilots use regularly. But is it right for you?

One of the unique things about flying for a major airline is that, even at the relatively small bases, you frequently share a cockpit with people you’ve never met before. The level of standardization at modern airlines smooth out the operational aspects of working with strangers, and the fact that airline pilots tend to be […]

Check out the debut of ‘V1 Rotate,’ a new digital series from a longtime friend of FLYING.

It is a beautiful starlit night deep in the Bahamas’ Exuma Cays, warm and soft in the light caress of the easterly trades. I am sitting on a white-sand beach moodily lit by the flicker of a driftwood bonfire, sipping a dram of aged rum, and taking an occasional pull on an aromatic cigar. Piper […]

It’s a brilliantly clear, calm and slightly chilly Tuesday morning in the skies high over Central Florida, and I’m feeling a little sick. I am packed tightly among 15 other skydivers sitting backward in a steeply climbing PAC 750XL, all swaying rhythmically as one to the light turbulence. The others’ moods are ebullient, high-fives and […]

When you combine rockets, planes, boats and kids, you have it all.

A certain amount of an airline pilot’s life is given over to marking time on and around airports, and that is doubly true of the junior captain on reserve. I am currently ensconced in the midcentury-modern environs of the TWA Hotel, built around Eero Saarinen’s soaring TWA Flight Center at John F. Kennedy International Airport. […]

On a sunny August afternoon in New York City, an Airbus A330 landed on Runway 31R at John F. Kennedy International Airport. It appeared to be a perfectly normal flight, noteworthy only in the era of COVID-19 for having been one of relatively few airplanes to come across the North Atlantic tracks from Europe that […]

Airline flying is pretty cushy work most days, particularly at the major US carriers, with largely reliable aircraft, a fairly robust support network, and nearly universal procedures that keep everyone on roughly the same page. Most airline pilots, by temperament and long experience, are perfectly content with the atmosphere of ordered boredom that normally reigns […]

I have to confess that I have a very love-hate relationship with the state of Florida. On one hand, this upper-Midwestern country boy has come to crave white sand, salt water and warm winter sunshine, all of which Florida is blessed with in great abundance. On the other hand, I am decidedly not a fan […]