I.L.A.F.F.T

After spending $20 on a Discovery flight, I knew without a doubt this is what I wanted to do with my life — fly! The only flight school in town paired me with George, the best flight instructor ever, in my opinion. My first flight with George was July 6, 1978, and it was evident […]

I now have thousands of hours in my logbooks, but despite my best efforts, none represent a perfect flight. Many come close, but there was always something I could have done just a little bit better. So I reflected on the opposite type of flight entry: Which one represented my worst flight? That would be […]

It was late August and I was in Goose Bay in Labrador, Canada. For two days, my time there had been spent either at the local weather station or in my hotel room, parked in front of the Weather Channel. I had departed Bangor, Maine, two days before. My mission was to deliver a pretty […]

“Good judgment comes with experience; unfortunately, experience is usually gained through bad judgment.” That saying is probably as old as Wilbur and ­Orville. We old pilots have developed our good habits through many years of flying and training. We have made mistakes along the way, and we have learned from them. We have had the […]

As on all major holidays, July 4, 2015, was a day to take my beloved Grumman Yankee out to stretch her legs and keep my flying skills proficient. Never did I expect that this would be a day of reckoning and facing up to my first inflight mechanical failure in more than 36 years of flying. […]

As a relative newbie to flying in “weather,” I am impressed when I fly along VFR with more seasoned pilots in haze that would scare me if I were alone. “It’s just haze, with a good 5 miles of visibility,” I am often told. But looking straight ahead through 10 miles of mild haze is […]

So there I was, wondering if the dark side of the moon was half this cold as I finished the preflight of my Cessna Caravan with the big FedEx logo painted on the side. It was winter in Bishop, California, on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, which runs down the back […]

The occasional audible swoosh of ice departing the propellers and the bang of that ice hitting the fuselage provided the only comforting moments of this flight. How did I get here? Countless times when growing up I would look up from the ground at an airplane flying overhead and wish I were up there. This […]

I know you’ve heard the saying “Superior pilots use their superior judgment to avoid situations requiring their superior skills.” And I’m sure you know some superior pilots or have them at your field. Steely-eyed, square-jawed types — their flying skills are immense; with or without their planes they can bound over tall buildings. When I’m struggling […]

As a relative newbie to flying in “weather,” I am impressed when I head off VFR with more-seasoned pilots in haze that would scare me if I was alone. “It’s just haze, with a good 5 miles of visibility,” I am often told. But looking straight ahead through 5 miles of mild haze is indistinguishable […]