Risk Management

A few months ago, I was assigned an empty flight to take a plane to a maintenance center and return. What an opportunity! Two empty legs? An overnight in a neat city? Sounds like a free family vacation! I made sure it was all above board with the company and planned everything out. It was my […]

As a little boy, I always wanted to fly. I didn’t understand what it meant to be a pilot, just that to me, to be in the air was to be free. I grew up during the end of the Cold War, in the shadow of nuclear war with the USSR. I lived under the […]

Everyone talks about the weather but no one ever does anything about it.” (Stop me if you’ve heard that before.) The same could be said about managing the risk of general aviation. We—both this magazine and the industry as a whole—spend a lot of time preaching to pilots about the mechanics of understanding weather forecasts, […]

Roper 35, traffic in your twelve o’clock, three miles, type and altitude unknown.” This ATC call got our immediate attention. We were blitzing along in a U.S. Air Force T-38 at 300 knots and about 3000 feet msl, southbound over the Sacramento Valley. The controller might just as well have said, “I hope you’re looking […]

Have you ever been so cold your fingers got numb? Ever freeze your feet numb? This is the beginning of frostbite, in case you didn’t know. Which I totally didn’t, the first time my feet went numb while ice skating outdoors in Minnesota. It was -30 degrees F and I was playing hockey with the […]

I had friend—a mentor, really. He flew Hawker Hurricanes in WWII, and had great war stories. Like the time he was jumped and shot down by three Messerschmitts in the North African desert. He described the German machine gun rounds hitting his wings looking “like a sewing-machine stitching.” Looking over his shoulder, he saw the “white […]

Every flight starts with procedures and checklists for ensuring we follow all of its steps correctly. We have procedures for preparing the aircraft for flight, we have procedures for how to depart the airport and we have procedures for returning. These procedures are designed to help the pilots ensure that the aircraft is operated safely, […]

A Cessna 340, apparently making a low-altitude, high-speed pass over the runway at Watsonville, Calif., catches up to and collides with a Cessna 152 on final approach, killing four. A Piper Meridian overshoots the turn to final for Runway 30L at North Las Vegas and flies into a Cessna 172 on final for 30R, also killing […]

The day started out with perfect July flying weather in Washington State. I convinced my girlfriend to fly with me to Stehekin State Airport (6S9), located at the end of the beautiful, 50-mile-long Lake Chelan, where millions of years ago, glaciers scooped out the valley. I was well-prepared for the flight and even put a […]

Quite a lot has been written (and vlogged) about the crash of a Cessna 140 in a spot landing competition in May 2022. Most accounts point out—correctly—how decisions about spacing and glide path management, and even whether it was wise to hold the “pick-up game” contest in winds that caused cancellation of a larger, planned […]