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What is there left to say about the Cessna Skylane? You’d think not much. After all, it’s an airplane that’s been in production (with one decade-long break in production from the mid-80s to the mid-90s) since 1956. During that time Cessna has built more than 20,000 Skylanes, making it one of the most popular models […]

It was one of those things that I knew I’d remember. I was a guest of Robinson Helicopter at a reception for customers and the press in a large, immaculate hangar at the company’s factory in Torrance, California, when we all heard it, the unmistakable sound of a turbine helicopter approaching. It was, of course, […]

When it comes to pure size and reach, no ab initio/professional career flight training academy can surpass Airline Transport Professionals (ATP), a flight academy founded in 1984 in Jacksonville Beach, Florida. With 25 locations now stretching from San Diego and Fort Lauderdale to Trenton, New Jersey, and another four locations (Charlotte, Tampa, Indianapolis and Oakland) […]

Seventeen years ago, I stood inside an old B-24 airplane at the Asheville, North Carolina, airport and watched, transfixed, as a middle-aged man connected with a father he’d never known, just by sitting in the cockpit of the plane his father had flown … and died in … during World War II. It was one […]

There is little excuse for any pilot flying in the United States not to have seen a recent weather radar picture when thunderstorms are possible along the route. Any computer can link you to Nexrad radar sites before takeoff, and satellite downlink of more current weather radar is available at a price that makes sense […]

Just as gourmands judge a meal by the quality of the dessert, nonpilot passengers rate a pilot’s skills by the landing at the end of the flight. No question, based on their recent “landing” Captain Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger and First Officer Jeff Skiles, of US Airways Flight 1549, have gotten top marks for their […]

The entire normal operating checklist for the new Embraer Phenom 100 light business jet fits on both sides of a laminated card that you can slide into a shirt pocket. While other business jets need giant spiral-bound pages upon pages to go through before liftoff, the Phenom is designed to cut pilot workload to a […]

I interviewed a physicist once who told me that the kind of “warp speed” space-bending travel made famous by Star Trek wasn’t theoretically impossible. It’s just that we don’t know enough yet how to make it work. Something about requiring more energy than exists on the planet, at our current state of knowledge, or some […]