Pilot Proficiency

For decades, aircraft have used engine bleed air for a variety of purposes, spanning everything from engine starting to cabin pressurization to anti-icing. Here’s how engine bleed air works.

John Mugavin is made of rare stuff. This stocky, hugely talented, successful and gutsy guy is also as friendly and “old shoe” as they come. Mugavin is a familiar name around here for both the primo auto-body shop he owns and operates, and his fame as a dirt-track driver. Twenty-five years after building his first […]

I seldom experience déjà vu in my aerial life, though it lurks around every corner of my ground-bound existence. Enough changes from flight to flight to find something fresh in every airborne encounter, and the shift in perspective makes even old haunts seem entirely foreign when seen from above. But here and now, with the […]

If you ask a veteran airline pilot how many occasions he or she has given the command to evacuate an airplane during the course of their careers, most likely the answer will come silently with thumb and index finger forming a goose egg. The answer is a testament to the overall safety of our business. […]

Ferrying light single- and twin-engine airplanes around the world is not a job for the inexperienced or the bold. I am reminded of this fact several times a year on flights in remote parts of the globe. We all have read stories of pilots who push their luck and lose. Some don’t bother with getting […]

Despite our takeoff clearance, I advised Amarillo Tower that we would need to taxi off the runway. My wife couldn’t latch the door on our newest acquisition, a 1972 Piper ­Arrow II. It was my fault. Although our prior airplane, a Cherokee Six, had the same tortuous slam-bang locking system, I forgot that it was […]

A longtime pilot and savvy airplane broker at Lunken Airport named Jerry Swart used to say, “Sooner or later, every crook ends up at the airport.” When you think about it, airports do seem to be a magnet for an array of colorfully shady characters — maybe more so in the days before the “benefits” […]

1. SAT — Static air temperature (sometimes called true air temperature) is the temperature of undisturbed air; that is, the temperature you would read if you could suspend a thermometer out in the air without having the effects (temperature rise) of an airplane moving through the air nearby. In jets, SAT (aka OAT) is determined […]

Cessna 152 Newnan, Georgia / Injuries: 1 Uninjured The solo student pilot reported that he was on final approach for a full stop landing when he observed another airplane waiting for the active runway. He intentionally landed long to accommodate the traffic and then “made [the] decision to keep up speed” in order to exit […]

Schweizer 269C Newberg, Oregon / Injuries: 2 Fatal The instructor and student were conducting a night orientation flight. According to a witness who worked for the operator, about 15 minutes after the helicopter departed, he heard what sounded like an engine rollback and the helicopter making an autorotation. This was followed by the sound of […]