FLYING Magazine

With Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport (ATL) notorious as the busiest airport in the US—with passengers carried at just over 103 million—the air traffic in the Atlanta area can, at times, be intense. DeKalb-Peachtree (PDK), just 17 nautical miles northeast, is a perfect GA airport for anyone visiting the metro area interested in avoiding ATL traffic. […]

Gaithersburg is the choice for many pilots who don’t want to fly into Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD) or aren’t able to fly into Washington’s Reagan National Airport (DCA). The Montgomery County Airpark (GAI) sits roughly 25 miles north of the nation’s capital, making for a short drive to downtown Washington. The airpark’s single 4,202-foot […]

A. Map on the Ground Think of a taxi chart like a road map, assuming you’re old enough to remember one of those. Without charts on their kneeboards or iPads, pilots might have no idea of where they’re expected to taxi before ground control begins issuing clearances. The airport diagram helps pilots understand taxiway and […]

When an accident’s cause is not easily found.

A simple ILS approach ends in an unexplained disaster.

Traditionally, the purpose of an instrument approach is to stabilize the pilot and the aircraft, lined up with the runway and in just the right position from which to land. Well, not in this case. The localizer directional aid approach, also commonly called the “localizer darn angle” approach, lines the aircraft up to the airport […]

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 […]

When their equipment doesn’t work, pilots need to work a little harder.

The accident report highlights the ­culture of omertà among professional pilots that keeps them from blowing the whistle on incompetent or unsafe colleagues.

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 […]