Pilot Proficiency

My wife and I stood up from the couch in the well-appointed office and shook hands with National Transportation Safety Board chairman Robert Sumwalt. We thanked him for taking the time to squeeze a visit into his packed schedule. The visit was the culmination of our personalized tour at NTSB headquarters, an opportunity not often […]

When I earned my private ticket in 1960, jet aircraft were still rather rare, even in the San Fernando Valley. My home field, Whiteman Air Park in Pacoima, California, was near Van Nuys and Lockheed airports, both of which were busy commercial fields. The local landing and departing traffic was mainly at piston-engine airspeeds, which […]

“Richard, you have failed this portion of the check ride. You will not be getting a type rating today.” My first thought was the designated examiner had made a mistake. “You have had full needle deflection twice on this approach,” he explained. I was dumbfounded. I had not seen full needle deflection — not once […]

As Steve Thorne told us recently, out of all the aircraft he has already flown and would love to fly, no plane comes close to a Spitfire for him. That one is clearly at the top of his “bucket list.” Still, that doesn’t mean there aren’t more aircraft on his list, and as a result […]

Although the Morristown Six could easily be confused with a ’60s rock-and-roll band, the name actually applies to a standard instrument departure procedure, also known as a SID. SIDs look and feel different from traditional approach procedures, often including far more information arranged in a complex layout some pilots might find confusing. Air traffic control […]

I agree with your November Remarks that we should not give up on a drivers license medical, and you agree that for many of us, especially those with special issuances, BasicMed is a real improvement.My biggest bellyache is the safety pilot issue. AOPAs lobbyist, with whom Ive discussed it, says that even the FAA realizes how silly it is to say you need a third class medical to be second in command, but not to be PIC. Its possible the FAA will decide they can loosen that rule and still be within the law.

Every January we get to snicker up our flight jacket sleeves at the antics of easily distracted pilots with wings, rotors or other means of defying gravity-and logic. While this custom of mocking those whove slipped the surly bonds of sanity and touched the face of chagrin goes back many years, we cling to hope that we will learn from our mistakes. Alas…These exploits are gleaned from NTSB reports from 2014, excluding fatal accidents. So, if you rose from the ashes of what should have killed you that year, youre fair game.

I was southbound on a solo cross country flight before getting my license, returning to Miami Executive Airport (KTMB). The ceilings and visibility were dropping and I was down to about 1500 feet over the Everglades swamplands. I navigated using roads and other VFR checkpoints, which were getting harder to see out the Cessna 172s windshield.

More than once Ive been accused of needing to get a life. Im not sure what theyre talking about, but in my spare time I do enjoy reviewing various aviation publications, including accident reports and incident summaries.

Many of you have written to express confusion and disbelief about my ILS Nuances article in November. A couple of you even caught an important mistake I made. First, thanks to all of you for your notes. Now, let me recap a few things to hopefully help you (and me) better understand.