Technique

Our training for the instrument ticket focused on flying by reference to instruments, how to shoot approaches, holds etc. By that point pilots were presumed to have mastered the art of landing, so who needed any more instruction on that? (Or, so the argument goes.) Your approach speed is an essential precursor to a good […]

These reports of near midair collisions, NMACs, should be deeply frightening to any pilot. The pilots’ experiences strongly suggest more vigilance and, ultimately, increased safety. Nose-to-Nose The pilot briefly looked down to scan the instruments and gauges. When she looked up, there was an airplane right in front of her—she could see faces, wheels … […]

Every year, the Aviation Safety Reporting System staff selects 50 of the most profound reports in a category, here Controlled Flight Toward Terrain, and publishes them. For 2022, eight relate to IFR the GA way. Lightly edited for clarity and grammar, let’s learn from their mistakes. Who Said What? A CFII was conducting training with […]

Holds are the bane of many pilots’ existence. The variety of helpful and not-so-helpful tips, tricks, and other “aids” tells us how big a problem it is. Fortunately, most of us eventually figure out that published holds are easy. A picture tells a thousand words. Unless we are a little OCD about that 70/20 section, […]

While we train for the essential ability to fly approaches to minimums, that’s not always enough preparation for real-life weather, which can conjure up things that don’t fit neatly into the ceiling/visibility numbers on the charts. Sometimes it’s not clear: Am I at those minimums? Do I have the visual minimums to cancel? Should I […]

We all learned how to fly procedure turns when we got our instrument rating. We probably even had to fly a procedure turn or two on the practical test to qualify for the certificate. But since then it has been vectors to final nearly every time and our ability to fly a procedure turn correctly […]

The second leg of your Tennessee-to-Kentucky journey (see January IFR) is going more smoothly than the first, but there are yet some tough decisions to make before parking for the night at Lexington, Kentucky. There’s the matter of working around a busy airport with a runway closure in marginal VFR weather. Oh, and it’ll be […]

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 […]

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 […]

The flight to your vacation destination ended a few miles short with an unplanned overnight in Virginia. The trip started from home base in Minnesota and included an unexpected icing encounter followed by a closed runway that required a diversion. By contrast, it’s an uneventful start early the next day to fly VFR with your […]