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Looking toward the horizon isnt just the province of sailors looking for land or of preteens daydreaming their way through history class.

Pilots use it on virtually every flight to take off and land, certainly, but also to keep the airplane upright. When a natural horizon isnt available, an artificial one inside the cockpit allows pilots on instruments to keep the airplane under control. Basic stuff, certainly, but loss of control due to disorientation remains a leading cause of accidents in aviation.

Anyone with a pulse was inundated by the coverage of the crash of John Kennedy Jr. off Marthas Vineyard in July. Regardless of your opinion of the quality or the saturation of the med…

Theres an old saying in aviation that youll hear throughout your flying career: Trust your instruments.

Anyone who has had instrument training has been beaten over the head by the instructor. The strategy is necessary in order to overcome your proprioceptive sensors – the so-called seat of the pants sensations – that you learned to rely on when flying VFR.

Yet, what may not have been emphasized is that your instruments can and occasionally will lie to you. Therefore a basic function of cockpit resource management requires a continuous cross-check of the engine, flight and navigation instruments. Its akin to the old saw, just because youre paranoid, dont think someones not ou…

I suspect many pilots spent the weekend of July 17th the same way I did: Alternately fielding puzzled questions from friends about the John F. Kennedy Jr. crash and being irritated beyond description by round-the-clock news coverage of the incident, much of it depressingly incompetent.

When the local news outlet wanted answers now, a pimply faced 300-hour CFI is suddenly transformed into an on-camera authority and those of us with the restraint to keep our traps shut while the NTSB does its duty can only grimace at the results.

At a dinner party that weekend, I was asked by a friend You wouldnt do that, would you? as if that was as plain as the nose on my face, even as the Coast G…

Pilots who want to get from Point A to Point B are no dummies. Most of the time, the shortest distance is that straight line on the chart.

Part of the navigation training that every beginning pilot receives is how to use dead reckoning to fly that line. Getting there quickly and efficiently is, after all, one of the many benefits of flying as opposed to driving. But that direct route to the destination may not be all it is cracked up to be. Careful consideration of some of the available routing options may show that more distance is less hassle in the long run.

Although IFR pilots have more points to consider when selecting routes, VFR pilots also need to think about the dynamics of…

When I was a new flyer, an old instructor named Tony Stubby Azzetti taught me how to hand-prop an airplane. Despite the lack of three fingers on one hand, he made it look easy, as though hed been swinging props to start airplane engines for decades. Always remember, he said as I took the propeller blade for the first time, that propeller cant see you and wont feel a thing if your melon gets in the way. Old Stubby sure knew how to teach.

Safety-conscious pilots will shake their heads in disbelief that anyone would intentionally grab a propeller and swing it. Good. Keep that attitude and youll live to be an old pilot. But some day, when your guard is down, you may be tempted to tw…

The world of charter pilots is different from that inhabited by those who fly for fun, people who use their planes for business travel, or even airline pilots.

Many are contract pilots who get paid when they make a trip, putting pressure on them to complete trips under almost any conditions. They may fly a variety of equipment in varying condition, despite Part 135 rules that may say otherwise.

Charter customers are a demanding lot. They expect airline-style performance with private plane-style convenience. They want to be on time, and they vote with their checkbooks.

With that kind of environment, the safety record of Part 135 passenger flights borders on remarkable. But like any o…

If vectors to a runway 90 degrees off the prevailing wind make your palms sweat, if you sometimes pick airports based more on avoiding crosswind landings than their proximity to your destination, youre not alone.

Crosswind landings have been causing anxiety attacks in pilots for a long time now – along with crunched wingtips and bent landing gear – and will apparently continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

Although all student pilots learn crosswind techniques, once on their own they tend to avoid crosswind landings whenever possible. The biannual tune-up often doesnt help much, as many instructors are just as willing to seek out runways where the wind will be more inconveni…

If you fly much over the water – even over wide bays and rivers – youve had to quell the uneasiness that arises when the engine goes into auto rough mode the instant youre beyond gliding range of shore. Not to worry; its not just you.

The prospect of going into the water in an airplane terrifies most pilots, chiefly because few prepare for it and, in general, instructors dont know enough about the relevant risks to make well-informed judgments about overwater flying.

As a result, certain myths and half-truths about ditching seem to persist, handed down from one pilot to the next who read something or knows someone who knew someone who vanished without a trace in Lake Michigan…

Maybe a gusty crosswind forced you off the runway. Perhaps a mechanical glitch led you to lose control at precisely the wrong moment. Or, gasp, a momentary lapse of judgment might have led your airplane in the wrong direction.

Now your pride and joy is a little worse for wear. The landing gear is collapsed and the prop is bent. Or maybe a wing ripped off and a passenger is injured. What now?

Just how you handle the first moments after an accident may have a profound bearing on the rest of your flying career. There are things you must do, things you should do and things you should avoid.

The governments definition of what constitutes an accident covers a broad range from minor di…

Every semester I teach a course called Integrated Flight Operations. This is the students introduction to instrument flying. They learn right off the bat that there is a host of new material, charts and regulations with which they will have to become intimately familiar if they are to be safe instrument pilots. A sample of the text, charts and the AIM demonstrates there is a mound of material to absorb.

After the moans quit and their eyeballs return to their sockets, I pose the question many instrument pilots have been asking themselves for years: What is the purpose for studying, learning and, in the end, presumably knowing all that stuff?

When you boil it down, all the rules, p…