Pilot Proficiency

Why is it when youre trying to do something good, the weather always turns bad? Todays mission is a Patient Airlift Services (PALS) flight from Montpelier, Vermont to Boston, Massachusetts. Your quick hop from your home base in Burlington, Vermont already gave you a decent instrument warm-up.

Fall conjures memories of bright blue skies, cool mornings and generally good daytime flying. But in aviation, looks can be deceiving. New air masses are on the move, the jet stream begins to flex its muscle over much of the United States, fronts are marching southward, and theres likely a tropical storm in the Caribbean or the Gulf. How does this affect your flying and how can you avoid an unplanned turn of events?

One of many dangerous situations that can arise in the cockpit is when there is confusion about who is flying the airplane. Whether you are transferring control to an autopilot, a copilot or a student, it is critical that you verify that the transfer is complete and that the other source knows that it, he […]

By now we’ve seen plenty of inflight videos taken from vantage points outside the airplane after intrepid pilots affixed their GoPros and Garmin VIRBs externally, usually with a suction cup mount. Is this legal in the eyes of the FAA? Surprisingly, the answer is yes. But as is often the case, it’s a qualified yes. […]

Generally I steer way clear of temporary flight restrictions, which means that I’m grounded any time the president is in town. And generally when the president is in town, I am aware of it days in advance. But recently, when President Obama was visiting the Los Angeles area, I had no idea until I was […]

When I was a little girl growing up on the west side of Cincinnati in the ’50s, I was obsessed with airplanes, but the closest I came to any were the distinctive V-tails that flew regularly over our house. And I remember my father saying, “There go the Hogans,” referring to four brothers who operated […]

Pilots want ways to mitigate bad weather. The Coded Departure Route (CDR) is one of the least-known such tools in GA, although its been available since 2007. The AIM tells us, CDRs provide air traffic control a rapid means to reroute departing aircraft when the filed route is constrained by either weather or congestion. So, if youd rather not wait, a CDR might be for you.

The main article covers a lot of things to consider for your various briefings. Here, though, is a view of the items you might want to brief for each phase of your flight.

Preflight weather planning has long consisted of calling an FAA Flight Service Station. Years ago, you might have even visited one. But, using the Internet, you can now draw on the same resources that meteorologists use. While the 2000s brought weather data to the cockpit, were now getting some Internet tools to the cockpit via dedicated datalink. Although we cant yet cheaply surf the web at cruise, we connect to the Internet at the FBO, on the ramp and in the plane on the ground, using phones and tablets with WiFi and cellular data.

Remember that web sites outside the FAA and NWS domains should be considered supplementary tools to be used in combination with a weather briefing through official sources.