FLYING Magazine

Although the Morristown Six could easily be confused with a ’60s rock-and-roll band, the name actually applies to a standard instrument departure procedure, also known as a SID. SIDs look and feel different from traditional approach procedures, often including far more information arranged in a complex layout some pilots might find confusing. Air traffic control […]

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 […]

Clouds are mostly harmless, but sometimes they turn on you.

Teterboro is one of the busiest business aviation airports in the United States, handling 178,000 takeoffs and landings annually, many on IFR flight plans. Most runways offer a straight-in approach, except Runway 1. KTEB’s proximity to nearby Newark Liberty means the best approach available to Runway 1 is the ILS Runway 6, circle to land […]

With the early morning sun just beginning to brighten the sky, my 1966 Piper Cherokee climbed from Meriden Markham Airport’s (KMMK) Runway 18. The conditions in Meriden, Connecticut, were clear, with calm winds — a perfect day for flying. Armed with a Special Flight Rules Area VFR flight plan, I turned toward my destination, Tipton […]

In September 2014, a Cessna 172 overtook and collided with a homebuilt Searey amphibian on final approach to the Buffalo-Lancaster Regional Airport (KBQR) in Lancaster, New York. The 172 pilot, 78, with 2,500 hours, and his 14-year-old passenger died when their airplane spiraled out of control and crashed. Remarkably—since one tends to think of midair […]

Localizer-only approaches have been around for decades, providing better-than-VOR lateral guidance while demanding no special cockpit avionics except the standard VOR-ILS indicator common to most airplanes. When it comes to accuracy, full-scale deflection of the course-deviation indicator from the center on a VOR signal represents 12 degrees off course, while a similar deflection on the […]

They say a pilot never stops learning. But that’s not true. Complacency can set in right around the time we’ve forgotten what flaming tomatoes have to do with flying airplanes. We realize that most flights go just fine, and without a healthy spook now and then, we reach a learning plateau. My first spook hit […]

The C35 Bonanza, N5946C, was cruising at 6,500 feet when there was a sudden loud bang from the engine compartment, followed by a smell of oil.

Most ILS approaches are constructed pretty much the same way. The environment in which a pilot might fly them can vary widely, however, and is important to consider. At an airport like New York’s La Guardia, which sees 375,000 annual takeoffs and landings, the ILS Runway 13 at the airport is used often. These traffic […]