I.L.A.F.F.T

In 1980, as a local banker for 15 years, I was asked by the bank’s directors to become more involved in community affairs—specifically, to take over the position of chairman of finance on the executive board of the Boy Scouts of America in our town of Greenwich, Connecticut. In that position, I was responsible for the finances […]

By the fall of 1978 I’d worked for Piper Aircraft in Lakeland, Florida, for three years. I was the assistant chief engineer-technical, which meant I had the people in the structures, aerodynamics, power plants, systems, electrical/avionics and flight-test groups all working for me. At the time, we were working extremely hard to certify the new […]

I planned to make a flight on a Wednesday from my small community airport in the Detroit area to KLUK near Cincinnati, Ohio. Late on Tuesday afternoon, I found out the runway would be closed at my strip on Wednesday as part of an FAA-mandated taxiway destruction. If I wanted access to the airplane on […]

I have never parked my airplane after a more or less uneventful flight and been so dismayed at the sight of my wing when I shut down the engine. The flight, approach and landing were ­textbook, with no hint at all of the excitement that could have greeted me that night. No, the ailerons were […]

Sometimes we face situations as pilots that we feel lucky to walk away from. In my case, I learned a valuable lesson in dealing with hazardous attitudes and forgoing a checkout on a similar airplane to the one I had been flying. Little did I know that this situation would become the catalyst for my […]

In 1986, I flew a Beechcraft Baron 58 each night carrying canceled bank checks from Baltimore to Richmond, Virginia; Charlotte, North Carolina; Philadelphia and back to BWI, departing at about 10 p.m. and returning by 6 a.m. the next morning. I was part of a network of check-carrying general aviation aircraft that crisscrossed the nation […]

From the time I was a teenage recruit in the Navy I had always wanted to fly. Some five years later I had my opportunity to get my private pilot’s license. That wasn’t enough for me, so I applied for a G.I. Bill benefit and began working on advanced ratings, eventually earning my CFII, AMEL […]

I was irritated to receive a phone call assigning me to a flight the next day, which was both my wedding anniversary and Thanksgiving, but such is the life of a charter pilot. I would be riding right seat in our Piaggio Avanti with its regular captain, Mike, taking a family on a last-minute flight […]

When I earned my private ticket in 1960, jet aircraft were still rather rare, even in the San Fernando Valley. My home field, Whiteman Air Park in Pacoima, California, was near Van Nuys and Lockheed airports, both of which were busy commercial fields. The local landing and departing traffic was mainly at piston-engine airspeeds, which […]

About halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles, in California’s vast Central Valley, lies Harris Ranch, an unlikely and welcoming island on an otherwise uninterrupted sea of drab and dusty farmland. The “ranch” is actually a complex of steak restaurants, a hotel, gas station and other amenities designed as a destination rest stop for drivers […]