IFR Magazine

• Stupid Pilot Tricks
• Incommunicado
• Paradoxical Minimums
• Quiz: Aeronautical Charts
• GPS Nav Problems
• You Can’t Rush Things
• Winter Storms

Rocky Mountain Metro (KBJC, “Metro”) is an active general aviation airport located about 21 NM west of Denver International Airport (KDEN) and just outside of the westernmost north-south border of Denver Class B airspace. While the elevation of Metro is 5673 feet MSL, about 10 miles to the west, the Rocky Mountains reach altitudes of […]

Recently I helped a friend purchase a Cessna 340A similar to what I fly. He’s pleased with his purchase. In fact, when word got out, another local pilot who’s looking for a 340A approached me, and I’ve begun helping him, leading me to consider the process. This airplane is an upgrade for both pilots, so […]

Airborne communications failures can be uncomfortable at best. It’s eerie hearing the radios go quiet when they should be bustling with transmissions, and you can’t tell anyone about your plight. It gets even worse when it’s a sign of something more serious, like an electrical system failure. It’s here where you must let good judgment […]

These pages often contain encouragement to pilots not to become so completely reliant on GPS that its loss constitutes no less than an emergency. GPS, both panel-mount and portable, can fail for external and internal reasons. Read about these GPS-failure events culled from ASRS reports. We hope this article will lead you to get some […]

Yes, we’d done as we were told. The hushed voice on the phone had promised a copy the 2019 Golden File from the Official Office of Plane Safety (OOPS)—the nearly magical file that contained that august organization’s conclusions as to which nonfatal aircraft accidents were the result of the most boneheaded moves by people who […]

Flying in the system is about, well, flying, and not so much about checking the boxes of 14 CFR Part 91-fill-in-the-blank. Yet the rules are always in the background, directing your tasks. You (usually) don’t check the regulations; moreover, they’re in different places in the rulebook, or in a different book altogether. And, they’re in […]

• Editor’s Log
• Unicom
• Becoming A Master
• Gyro Failures
• Unwritten Rules
• LSA Transitions
• Cockpit Discomfort
• Accident Probe 
• NTSB Reports
• Learning Experiences

One day when flying from Iqaluit, Canada (CYFB) to Sault Ste. Marie in Michigan (KANJ) at Flight Level 360 we heard the following exchange on Guard, 121.5: “Bonjour Montreal, C1243, Flight Level 290.” Someone came back and said, “You’re on guard.” Quickly, the other pilot said, “Well, you are on Guard.” And the other pilot […]

Pilots and Emotional Intelligence Pilots tend to have lower emotional intelligence scores than the rest of the population and researchers are looking at what that means for training and culture at aircraft operations. “Overall, the findings show that pilots tend to have lower trait EI scores, indicating less confidence and reliance on their emotional world, […]