Pilot Proficiency

Galen Hanselman, who has published several guidebooks and charts for pilots interested in landing on something other than 5,000-foot paved runways, sent me his two-volume flier’s guide to Utah and the associated “Supplemental World Aeronautical Chart,” which resembles a WAC chart but includes a slew of backcountry airstrips not on the WAC. The quality of […]

You are likely aware of NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS), which can give you a “get out of jail free”-card if you self report a mistake you’ve made during a flight. What you may not be aware of is that the ASRS publishes the submitted stories, anonymously of course, in a newsletter and in […]

I’ve been to a handful of parties in my life, and for the most part, they’ve all been rather staid affairs. Which is quiet ironic. You see, at most of these dos, I often run into people who tend to have the ideal solution for fixing the weakening Euro, rising inflation, ISIS, India’s meek bowling […]

Chances are you’re fairly comfortable with landing in a crosswind — up to a point. When the wind is howling, you might feel you lack the skill (or rudder authority) to track a straight line along the centerline with one wing held low into the breeze. What should you do? Head for another airport with […]

I was in the grocery store picking up some food for Super Bowl Sunday when I got the call. The offer I made on the 1970 B58 Baron had been accepted. A quick look online showed that there was one flight leaving that afternoon for Arkansas, and in three hours I was on my way. […]

A 17-year, 26,000-hour A320 captain, who was a check airman for his airline as well as a certified airframe and power plant mechanic, called a friend to say he would fly over his house later that day to show him the Aerostar 601P he had bought. At a quarter to five the friend, a retired […]

Some instructors say that flying can’t be taught in the cockpit. And while we have to fly a certain number of hours in an actual aircraft in order to earn the various levels of pilot certificates, there is some validity to this argument. In the cockpit, there are many distractions from the teaching process: traffic, […]

The National Transportation Safety Board’s determination that a** 29-year-old Cessna pilot’s use of his cell phone to take selfies in flight caused a crash** that killed him and a passenger has a lot of folks scratching their heads. For starters, there’s no evidence that the pilot was taking pictures with his cell phone when the […]

“Gentlemen, start your engines!” The crowd cheered as Mitchell Municipal Airport reverberated with the sound of 50 piston power plants rumbling to life. Dozens of slick homebuilt airplanes with flashy paint jobs and neatly applied race numbers taxied in a long line to the runway. “Race 38, cleared for takeoff,” boomed the loudspeaker, and a […]

Last night, after an eight-hour flight across the North Atlantic ocean, I flew into the world’s busiest airspace, acting as the pilot monitoring. I suddenly found myself perplexed by a right roll into an unexpected course change. My monitoring had obviously failed. The pilot-flying had made a mistake in his automation input, and the result […]