I.L.A.F.F.T | FLYING Magazine

I Learned About Flying from That: Change of Plans

On the morning of December 29, 2015, I was planning a flight in my flying club’s Piper PA-28-235 from Northwest Regional Airport (52F) in Roanoke, Texas, to Clark Field Municipal Airport (KSEP) in Stephenville. The idea was to have lunch at a favorite barbecue restaurant. I planned to depart 52F and land at Fort Worth […]

I Learned About Flying from That: Lost Soul or Guardian Angel?

We were flying VFR, but just barely. Our group included a dozen Grand Canyon sightseeing pilots returning from a morning trip to the South Rim, an assortment of Cessna 206s, 207s and 310s, airplanes loaded with tourists ready for naps and completely unaware of our meandering detours as we sought safe passage. But we were all […]

I Learned About Flying From That: Icing Above

I was a 30-year-old 600-hour instrument instructor with half ownership in a well-equipped Piper Archer II and a good job to pay the bills. I felt I had a good understanding of my personal minimums and promised myself never to break them — a policy that has paid off many times. But that almost wasn’t the […]

I Learned About Flying From That: My Longest Trip to Vegas

People like to ask, “What was your favorite flight?” There are so many, I wouldn’t know how to choose. But ask me to choose my least favorite flight, and I can tell you in a heartbeat. It started on a beautiful February day. My buddy Shaun decided to join me. We made a lot of […]

I Learned About Flying From That: An Airline Crew’s Close Call

Through the years, I have enjoyed relating to ILAFFT stories in Flying and have even corrected a few bad habits based on what I’ve read. I thought there would come a time when the lessons I personally learned while flying would no longer translate to GA flying, and my window of opportunity to submit to […]

I Learned About Flying From That: Trust but Verify

Ferrying light single- and twin-engine airplanes around the world is not a job for the inexperienced or the bold. I am reminded of this fact several times a year on flights in remote parts of the globe. We all have read stories of pilots who push their luck and lose. Some don’t bother with getting […]

I Learned About Flying From That: With a Little Help from My Friends

My wife was loading the Freedom Machine with luggage and our three young sons as I entered the Greater Cincinnati FBO to file IFR for the flight back to Cleveland. A TV with the Bengals-Browns game caught my attention. It was the close-up of a Browns lineman with a wet jersey filling the screen that […]

I Learned About Flying From That: Hypnosis

The late afternoon sky was clear and the air crisp. Light spread itself evenly across the landscape in the absence of clouds, and colorful fugitive leaves danced across the runway ahead of a mild, quartering crosswind. The relative calm outside the cockpit of my Cessna trainer dueled in graphic opposition to the inner excitement I […]

I Learned About Flying From That: Into the Gloom

Standing on the ramp, glancing at Runway 17/35 at North Houston Airport (9X1), I took a deep breath as I ticked off items on the preflight checklist for N9271U, the 1976 Cessna 150M that had been my primary trainer so far. The brutal heat and humidity of the Houston-area summer had not yet set in, […]

I Learned About Flying From That: Hazardous Habits

It was a sunny Friday afternoon as I gathered my friends at our usual meeting point, the local airport coffee shop. We were off for a weekend of fun and leisure after a long week at the office. We departed San Fernando International Airport in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina, in a 1980 Baron B55 and […]