Pilot Proficiency

The following is an edited transcript of communications between 
Colorado Springs Approach Control and Tower and the pilot of a Mooney M20E arriving on an IFR flight plan from Rapid City, South Dakota. 869: Springs Approach, Mooney 79869, checking in 10,000 with Sierra. APP: 
 Mooney 79869, Springs Approach, 
expect an ILS Runway 17L. 869: […]

It was the slightest of rumbles. Both John and I felt it. John, who was at the controls, eased the yoke forward slightly and the rumble stopped. We landed and taxied to the ramp. We had an airplane full of pilots, but no one else had felt the rumble. It was the aerodynamic warning of […]

It was late August and I was in Goose Bay in Labrador, Canada. For two days, my time there had been spent either at the local weather station or in my hotel room, parked in front of the Weather Channel. I had departed Bangor, Maine, two days before. My mission was to deliver a pretty […]

Cash prizes have been big motivators in aviation. The first flights across the Atlantic, the first man-powered flight, the first flight into space by a nongovernmental program — to name a few — were brought about, or at the very least hurried along, by the lure of a big payday. Not to say that honor […]

Is it possible to love two professions beyond reasonableness and be unable to distinguish which one delights you more? This romantic dilemma can occur with humans, but among professions? A recent “recurrent” gave new instruction about such a love triangle. I thought I had enjoyed a 40-plus-year career in surgery about as much as anybody […]

Her name was Maddie, she was 11 years old, and she had never been in a small plane before. Dark-haired and dark-eyed, smaller and shyer than her giggling friends, Maddie had surprised me by shooting her hand skyward when I asked who wanted to sit up front. “OK, but just so you know, you might […]

In a Skycatcher you don’t exactly slip the surly bonds, but we did successfully levitate on the recreational pilot test I gave yesterday. Actually, this curious little Cessna 162 sport machine could grow on you if it weren’t for that really weird control stick. My earnest young applicant was nervous but well prepared, and he […]

The rudder travel limiter of the Indonesia AirAsia Airbus A320 began acting up in January 2014. Attempts to fix it were unsuccessful, and failures became increasingly frequent. In the course of 74 flights between December 19 and December 27, 2014, the airplane’s electronic centralized aircraft monitoring system, or ECAM, reported more than 30 faults. Many […]

My goal in this column is to bring the art and science of forecasting to pilots. This is because forecasts arent perfect and still wont be in the foreseeable future. This is not an indictment of the profession, but an acknowledgement of the realities of the forecast problem. For example, a single balloon launch is used to represent the 400,000 cubic miles of troposphere over Arkansas, and only happens every 12 hours. This is why good forecasters are skeptical of models and blend them with experience, intuition, and their own analysis before making a forecast.

“Good judgment comes with experience; unfortunately, experience is usually gained through bad judgment.” That saying is probably as old as Wilbur and ­Orville. We old pilots have developed our good habits through many years of flying and training. We have made mistakes along the way, and we have learned from them. We have had the […]