General

In October of last year I retired from the University of South Florida after 25 years of consecutive employment in its medical college. I had served in several capacities during my tenure; ending as chairman of the surgery department for the last nine-plus years. Change is always challenging and I really had very little idea […]

Piper Cub (Photo: EAA / Jim Koepnick) Each month, Flying answers questions about the new sport pilot/light sport aircraft rule with assistance from the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA), the authority on the opportunities available within the category commonly known as “Sport Pilot”: Q: I’ve heard about all the new airplanes that sport pilots can fly. […]

Redundancy is a good thing. If one component fails to do its job a second one can take over and provide the needed function. Thinking about redundancy, I considered my gluttonous appetite for aviation information. I subscribe to a handful of aviation magazines. I get Business & Commercial Aviation (BCA) and Aviation International News to […]

I didn’t know Walter Kielbowicz. I know a few things about him, for which I have the internet to thank. He was born in 1917 in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He was an MP during World War II. He was married for 60 years and fathered two daughters. He worked as a lab technician in Holyoke, Massachusetts, […]

The captain of the 767 tilted an ear toward his cockpit speaker. The controller was calling their flight number. The first officer was flying the airplane. “Transglobal 63, cross two-zero miles south of XRAY intersection at flight level two-five-zero.” The captain was about to read back the clearance, but was interrupted by another airline checking […]

Every spring the Greater Cincinnati Airmen’s Club held a spot landing contest at Montgomery County (now Dayton Wright Brothers) Airport in Southern Ohio. It’s a non-towered field about 30 minutes north of Cincinnati with a long paved runway pointing southwest into the prevailing wind. I’m sure some wise soul realized that challenging rusty, winter-weary aviators […]

Texas Sport Cub (Photo: EAA / Jim Koepnick) Each month, Flying answers questions about the new sport pilot/light sport aircraft rule with assistance from the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA), the authority on the opportunities available within the category commonly known as “sport pilot”: Q: I weigh 330 lbs. Am I foolish to think I can […]

About 60 miles out, a surprise. Georgetown, Delaware, reports a ceiling of 200 feet and visibility of a mile. This comes to us via the automated surface observation system (ASOS) and is below minimums for all approaches to the airport. We’re already descending, talking to Washington Center, carrying my daughter, her husband and their two […]

“Fly the plane, fly the plane, fly the plane!” I remembered my instructors from years back drilling this phrase into my head during my training … and it would pay off! It was a foggy April morning in Atlanta. I had checked the weather the night before and the ceilings were forecast to be low […]

Business jets have an image problem. More precisely, a few of the people flying around in business jets — namely executives of companies that are burning through taxpayer money after having lost billions of dollars and having laid off hundreds of thousands of workers — have an image problem, and it has rubbed off on […]