General

I awoke early on a beautiful October Thursday morning. I had been planning to fly from Big Piney, Wyoming, (KBPI) to Meridian, Mississippi, (MEI) to pick up my brother, Darren. I had recently purchased a Bonanza A-36 and Darren was going to take my G-35 V-tail back to Mississippi. I arrived at the airport about […]

Everybody is flying less these days. Flight time in piston-powered personal airplanes is probably off the most due to the high fuel prices, but the economy and fuel costs are trimming flight hours for airlines and corporate operators, too. The noise office at my home base, Westchester County Airport just north of New York City, […]

Aeons ago, Flying had a regular column called Foreign Accent that reported on aeronautical doings abroad. I was writing it in 1976, and in the February issue I quoted a letter, originally published in the British magazine Flight, from one James Ferguson of Aberdeen, regarding the flight around England and Scotland of a World War […]

So far as I know, there are only three things in life about which one must be very careful: surgery, flying and how you treat other people. The rest will take care of itself. So there are elaborate rules that govern these three critical domains. This explains the preflight inspection, the need for a careful […]

General aviation has always been divided, or bifurcated as the business school types would say. One group flies for personal travel and recreation, and the other flies for business reasons. Most people who fly for business actually enjoy flying, particularly the owner-pilots, but even those who are strictly passengers are often aviation enthusiasts so the […]

A lot of pilots saw some impressive video of a German Airbus airline crew trying to land in a horrendous crosswind. Other than the wind, the weather was good. The crab angle on final was substantial and the turbulence enthusiastic. It turned into quite a tussle over the runway as the pilot tried to land. […]

As I sat down, I scanned the faces in the classroom. Some faces I recognized, most I didn’t. They were all captains from my airline. I turned toward the man that was speaking. Les Bowle’s voice was even-toned and relaxed. Les would be one of my new bosses. I glanced at my partner sitting in […]

What comes to mind when you think of the National Business Aviation Association? If you say the NBAA represents traditional corporate flight departments with full-time professional pilots flying turbine-powered aircraft, you would be correct. At least that describes the core of the NBAA. But Ed Bolen, president and CEO of the hugely successful association, says […]

Since 2002 the bestselling certified single-engine airplane in the world has been the Cirrus SR22. More than 700 new Cirruses have been sold per year for the past two years, and the company hopes to sell 800 in 2008. The question is, how do they do that? How do you take on Cessna and Columbia […]

In January I wrote about some of the horror stories, such as when a controller watched an airplane flying into extreme weather or actually gave a heading towards high terrain at night without trying to warn the pilot. While the pilots in these situations certainly contributed to their own demise, it is hard to believe […]