General

||| |—|—| | | | Last Sunday night, after the houseguests had gone to bed, my wife said, “That was the worst landing you’ve ever made.” My first thought was, “Little do you know! I’ve made some real mini crashes in my day.” The more I thought about it, though, the more I thought, “It […]

So you’ve decided to learn how to fly. No problem! Just open the yellow pages, choose a local flight school, call for an appointment and you will soon be linked with a professional flight instructor who loves teaching almost as much as he or she loves flying. When I asked for feedback from Flying readers […]

No matter how many tests I’ve taken, I still get anxious the night before an exam. In school I never pulled an all-nighter, believing that it was better to get a good night’s sleep and that anything I crammed into my cranium late the night before an exam wouldn’t stay with me after I’d handed […]

Each year I donate a flight to Catalina Island to the fundraising silent auction at my daughter’s school. Each year somebody buys it for a few hundred dollars. I wish I could say that each year the purchaser is delighted with the trip, but in fact hardly anyone ever actually takes it. I suppose that […]

Each year I donate a flight to Catalina Island to the fundraising silent auction at my daughter’s school. Each year somebody buys it for a few hundred dollars. I wish I could say that each year the purchaser is delighted with the trip, but in fact hardly anyone ever actually takes it. I suppose that […]

In Harry Met Sally, Meg Ryan is described as “high maintenance,” meaning that satisfying her needs is never simple or straightforward; keeping her happy requires constant attention. Anyone who owns an airplane is familiar with “high maintenance.” But maintaining an airplane so it meets the FAA’s basic airworthiness requirements isn’t as much about the expense […]

Check out Dick Collins’s BIG AIRPORT CHECKLIST This safety piece, which first appeared in the August edition of the Flying, was written months before the September 11th attacks on America. While the nature of our airspace has changed, and continues to change, we believe the general message, that you need to be prepared and profession […]

||| |—|—| | | | At first glance, I don’t even recognize him. Nine years ago, Hank Potter was a vibrant, jolly soul, full of laughter, fire and stories of being Jimmy Doolittle’s navigator on the famous B-25 raid of Tokyo in 1942. Today, he and the 11 other “Doolittle Raiders” who were able to […]

Study the airspace. Look at the standard terminal arrival procedures and departure procedures as well as the approaches. If you don’t think that is important, look at the VOR or GPS to Runways 13L and 13R at KJFK and tell me you’d like to fly that approach cold. Study the airport diagram and locate general […]

I’m sick of the term “pilot error.” A true pilot error is a rare event. But what is so often labeled a pilot error is actually a pilot decision that didn’t result in the outcome expected by the pilot, the regulators or the public. Real pilot errors can only occur in transport-category airplanes that are […]