Pilot Proficiency

The old saying tells us you cant be cleared for takeoff until the gross weight of the paperwork exceeds that of the aircraft. That hasnt changed much since Flight Service received reports on Teletypes necessitating cryptic abbreviations to conserve precious bandwidth on 75-baud lines. Calling Flight Service used to be required to file a flight plan and get a weather review from a specialist with information unavailable anywhere else. Technology has changed all that.

Displaced thresholds are just for landing in the direction of the displacement. So back in 2008 when the 4800-foot runway was displaced 1500 feet from both ends, the landing distance either way was 3300 feet. You may roll out, or even touch down and stop, on the displacement for the opposite direction.

The atmosphere in our normally gray conference room was, well, colorful, and the manager was wishing he hadn’t OK’d my idea for an informal meeting with local traffic helicopter and fixed-wing pilots after a recent and highly publicized accident. On that frigid, foggy morning, a pilot and a female ­reporter lifted off in a Bell […]

I’ve seen enough over the past few years to reach the conclusion that self-driving cars going mainstream is now a matter of when rather than if. The advanced technology in today’s production vehicles is helping to pave the way. While I haven’t had the chance to use the autopilot feature in a Tesla electric vehicle, […]

As an airline pilot, I was anxious to watch Sully. Finally, I could attend an aviation movie without my wife having to bear witness to eye-rolling and corrective commentary. Most likely, as a Flying reader, you have already seen the film; if you haven’t, consider this a spoiler alert. Regardless, I thought it would be […]

People like to ask, “What was your favorite flight?” There are so many, I wouldn’t know how to choose. But ask me to choose my least favorite flight, and I can tell you in a heartbeat. It started on a beautiful February day. My buddy Shaun decided to join me. We made a lot of […]

An inescapable part of flying the line as a junior pilot is working on birthdays, anniversaries and holidays — Christmas above all. Most everyone wants it off, especially those with young children, and many resort to tactics such as bidding a reserve line to get it. Under the old rules, Part 121 pilots were limited […]

Automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast is a GPS-based system meant to replace the traditional radar-based technology ATC has relied on for decades to detect and manage aircraft traffic. Accuracy and Efficiency ADS-B relies on an aircraft’s GPS receiver to determine highly accurate position and groundspeed information, which it calculates by receiving radio signals from a network of […]

Fronts in TAFs and weather briefings often mean a day of delays and canceled plans. Considering the impact that they have on flight operations, we should understand fronts. Lets study them so you can make a good guess about the resulting weather. Our modern knowledge of fronts began around 1910 in the Bergen School of Meteorology in Norway. Their early work laid out the mathematics of forecasting and described fronts, showing that they are defined by a change in air mass density. Changes in wind speed, humidity, or pressure are all secondary.

Jeff Van West is one of my favorite modern-day aviation writers. His article, Seeing Double in the November issue is a fine example of Jeff taking us by the hand through important, but oft overlooked and esoteric aspects of our IFR life. But his use of the word declination instead of the correct word, variation, is a fingernail on the blackboard kind of irritant, if you remember blackboards. I have these old yellowed books that I studied in the 50s: AF Manual 51-40, Air Navigation Vol 1, by the Department of the Air Force (1959), page viii, and The American Flight Navigator by John Dohm (1958) page 324.