Pilot Proficiency

I borrowed this title from a documentary about Pete Seeger and the Weavers because the phrase “wasn’t that a time” always comes to mind when I ­remember an airfreight company operating out of southwestern Ohio for nearly 30 years — first as Hogan Air and then Miami Valley Aviation. When I came back home to […]

The master mechanic, the inveterate tinkerer, the skilled craftsman who works magic in wood and metal and fiberglass: I am, sadly, none of these things. I know many people who are naturally handy, and I envy them. My own father, a carpenter and then a general contractor for 25 years, is one of these folks, […]

The privately operated Phenom 300, arriving from Milan’s Malpensa Airport with a single ­pilot and three passengers aboard, overflew the Blackbushe aerodrome, southwest of London, before circling to a left downwind for Runway 25. Blackbushe is not a controlled airport, but it once was, and it still has an old-fashioned tower with a glass-enclosed cab, […]

As they approached the outer marker at ­Buffalo in their Q400 turboprop, Capt. ­Marvin Renslow, 47, and First Officer ­Rebecca Lynne Shaw, 24, had allowed themselves to be distracted by an ­extended conversation about their previous icing experience compared to their current icing conditions. They were now too fast for so close in. About 3 […]

Empty Weight Empty weight is defined as the total weight of an aircraft including all fixed ballast, unusable fuel, undrainable oil, total quantity of engine coolant and total quantity of hydraulic fluid, and excluding crew, payload, usable fuel and drainable oil. Basic Operating Weight (BOW) Total weight of the aircraft, including crew, ready for flight, […]

I suspect that the majority of professional pilots encounters their most interesting jobs early in their careers: places where the pay is rotten, the airframes have 70,000 cycles on 50,000 flight hours, and tight finances put everything into a perpetual state of “What’s going to fail next?” My first flying job was in a Cessna […]

Landing gear gets as little respect as that old comedian Rodney Dangerfield — not much, really, which is surprising when you consider that almost everyone seems to measure the quality of the flight by the smoothness of the touchdown. That final transition that turns a flying airplane into a taxiing one, even when the distance […]

Advancing age and retirement bring on a certain sense of freedom and may, in fact, inhibit one’s social filter. And though I have worried mightily about what the devil I would do with myself once unemployed, I can report from two months in, so far, so good. An older friend told me long ago that […]

In 1958, as a stunt intended to promote the new Hacienda Hotel in Las Vegas, two pilots, Robert Timm and John Cook, stayed aloft in a Cessna 172, regularly refueled from a racing pickup truck, for 64 days and 22 hours. (Why they didn’t stay up another two hours and make it an even 65 […]

An Airbus A320 crew departs Chicago O’Hare Airport for Minneapolis. It is the first flight of a three-leg day, using the same airplane. Throughout the day, the pilots and flight attendants experience a “musty socks” odor. On the last flight, from Chicago to Boston, ATC gives a frequency change for the next sector. Despite having […]