Aviation Safety

One fascination I and many friends seem to have is aeronautical charts, especially old ones. If you look closely at a sectional from, say, the 1960s, you’ll immediately notice that they’ve gotten more complicated over the years. That’s an inevitable outcome from more airplanes and people flying in comparison. Cities and towns have grown, highways […]

In 2015, a public-private partnership involving the FAA, pilot and industry organizations, plus airframe and powerplant manufacturers, and known as the General Aviation Joint Steering Committee (GAJSC), used accident data to identify in-flight loss of control as the leading cause of fatal general aviation accidents. A GAJSC working group determined we could substantially reduce the […]

I was the CFI, flying with a keen 17-year-old student in a Grumman AA-5 Traveler. As we used to say in the Air Force when describing a flying scenario, “There we were, flying along, fat, dumb and happy.” It’s just a saying, take it easy—we weren’t actually fat, but we were happy, and the student, at […]

Beech Model E55 Baron Overtorqued Servo Clutch Testing of the pitch servo’s clutch tension revealed breakaway force needed was 45 lbs. The specified setting is 13 ± 2 lbs. Examination revealed a new cotter pin on the castle nut and the orange torque seal strip did not align. At some point during previous maintenance, the […]

The shop changed the oil in my retractable single and replaced the brake pads. The logbook entry stated they had changed the oil and filter, installed a “quick-drain” oil plug, changed the brake pads, etc. After any kind of maintenance, I’m pretty leery of flying the airplane, so I did a very thorough walk-around: oil […]

January 1, 2022, Southeast Arcadia, Fla. Mooney M20C Ranger At about 1211 Eastern daylight time, the airplane was substantially damaged during a forced landing. The private pilot and passenger were not injured. Visual conditions prevailed. According to the pilot, he verified before takeoff there was sufficient fuel aboard for the flight. While on final approach […]

Ensuring there is fuel aboard the airplane adequate for the planned flight is a basic, primary responsibility for any pilot. Unfortunately, the accident record tells us it’s one responsibility not all pilots fulfill. In our experience, fuel exhaustion, starvation or simple mismanagement accounts for a healthy proportion of engine-failure mishaps. This is true despite the […]

Whether we want to admit it or not, human flight by reference to instruments alone is an unnatural act. To determine up from down or left from right without a natural horizon, we need hours of training, and even more hours of regular practice. We also need a decently equipped airplane, stuffed with radios, colorful […]

For this magazine’s August 2021 issue, I wrote an article titled, “Take A Minute,” where I discussed some valuable advice about slowing things down and analyzing the situation around you. The initial inspiration came from a time where my captain and I were rushing to swap airplanes and when we thought we were done, he […]

Thanks for your excellent, thorough article on engine-loss training (“Engine-Out Training”) in the August 2021 issue. It reminds me that, in my experience, most of the training involves the procedure for restarting the engine. This is one-third of the response needed.   The other two-thirds are:  1: Pick a field  2: Set up to land […]