Airmanship

While visiting France a few years ago, I found an Aero Club that would let me fly with one of their pilots. At the club I was introduced to M. Bus, a retired businessman. My French was barely better than his English, but we spoke the common language of aviation. The airplane was a Piper […]

With a respectful nod to Don Brown, a now-retired ZTL controller who helped popularize the phrase, a “flick” is the “big picture.” In the ATC biz, this typically refers to traffic load, major runway flow directions, widespread poor weather, staffing/sectorization and a host of other factors. In other words, strategic information. Pilots need the same […]

I started learning to fly at the quaint, waterfront Albert-Whitted Airport in St. Petersburg, Fla., back in the 1980s. It was a great place to fly—beautiful scenery, plenty of options of places to go for practice landings and a reasonably easy airspace set up to facilitate painless statewide cross-country flights. There was one caveat, however. Just […]

There’s normal, and then there’s normal. Which is to say that while much of aviation relies on routine procedures and aircraft configurations, among other things, there are exceptions to most norms. For example, the FAA long ago declared a “normal” landing to be one with an airplane’s wing flaps, if any, fully deployed. That’s not […]

When my student crashed last week, I was one of the first to know. After experiencing relief that there were no injuries and disappointment that the Tecnam P2002 Sierra likely would not fly again, an unsettling feeling—was there something more I could have done?—took over. Maybe by relating in detail what happened, what decisions the […]

On April 2, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia issued a response to a petition that concludes, in relevant part, that compensated flight instruction constitutes carriage of a person for compensation, possibly giving rise to the FAA’s commercial operating regulations (e.g., FAR Part 135). According to a joint letter to […]

Where I come from, we call it a “Discovery Flight.” It’s a short flight that gives a non-pilot an introduction to the flight school and flying in general. “You’ll take the controls!” is a time-honored way for flight schools to market the flights, which I really enjoy doing. Some of the customers have never been […]

In the March 2021 issue, I discussed the need to restructure the way we teach flying, to focus ab initio training on developing habits that don’t have to be unlearned as one progresses through flight training and into advanced ratings and operations. The classic example is developing in students the habit of using airspeed as […]

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is formally asking the FAA and the National Weather Service (NWS) to take steps designed to improve the accuracy of automated weather observations by addressing equipment malfunctions in a more proactive manner. The requests come as the NTSB completes its investigations into the February 15, 2019, fatal crash of […]

I have something of a love-hate relationship with night flying. On one hand, I love the view of a city lit up at night, or the stars overhead, when away from ground lighting. There’s also the relatively low activity levels at airports and on ATC frequencies, the smoother air and how it’s easier to spot […]