Sam Weigel

I grew up and learned to fly on the snow-swept plains of Minnesota, but I really grew up in the crowded, smoggy skies over Southern California. It’s where I spent a couple of lean years flight instructing and freight dogging, making lifelong friends while scrambling to make ends meet on some vanishingly small paychecks. I […]

An old TWA captain once told me that the definition of a successful aviation career is when the chief pilot meets your retirement flight and wonders aloud, “Who the heck are you?” There’s some good advice buried in that witticism, and I’ve tried to live by it over the course of my career. I had […]

Ah, summer, the season of the good life. The season of verdant, rolling hills speckled with lazily grazing cattle, of smoky backyard burgers and grilled corn on the cob, of golden beaches replete with giggling children, bronzed skin and the tangy bouquet of salt air and sunscreen. I hope you enjoyed the summer just passed […]

I don’t know about you, but I sure love being proved right. Lord knows it happens rarely enough at home, so I have to look for small victories elsewhere. As it so happens, writing a ­monthly column for a widely read ­aviation magazine makes for a potentially rich vein of retrospective sagacity. Thus I was […]

I’ve been reading this magazine for two-thirds of my life, ever since I was an eager-eyed lad of 12. Back then, the arrival of Flying‘s newest issue was a highlight of my month. I’d read Len Morgan first, then Gordon Baxter, then Mac McClellan, Dick Collins and Peter Garrison, and then everything else. I had […]

There are days in every pilot’s life that are destined to be remembered forever: first solo, the Private Pilot check ride, the first time landing a taildragger or seaplane. Those of us who fly for the airlines don’t have many memorable flights, which is by design. Airline flying, done properly, is a mildly enjoyable experience, […]

Among the various fascinating denizens of the air sharing our friendly skies, there are a great many creatures of habit — but perhaps none quite to the degree of the common airline pilot. This species, to which I belong, takes great pride and comfort in its everyday routines, the highly scripted rituals of flight and […]

Tonight I am nestled in a cozy corner of Windbird’s enclosed cockpit, feet propped on her helm and a rum drink in my hands as I watch her dance to and fro across the anchor chain in the faint light of a milky half-moon. We are in the Bahamas’ Berry Islands and have tucked into […]

Airplanes, pilots and airports: Where you find two, you’ll find the third. In my airplane-obsessed childhood, this indisputable fact led to an early acquaintance with every airfield within a 20-mile radius. These were quiet country fields, mind you, but every so often a Cessna would drop in to do a couple of touch-and-goes, or maybe […]

The master mechanic, the inveterate tinkerer, the skilled craftsman who works magic in wood and metal and fiberglass: I am, sadly, none of these things. I know many people who are naturally handy, and I envy them. My own father, a carpenter and then a general contractor for 25 years, is one of these folks, […]