Pilot Proficiency

If you are ready to deal with the answer, here’s something you can try the next time you are in a room full of pilots. Ask them to hold up their hands if the answer to this question for them is “yes.” “How many here knew someone personally who was killed in an aircraft accident?” […]

CNN owned the coverage of the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 this past spring with its wall-to-wall commentary from experts like our own Contributing Editor Les Abend, a highly experienced Boeing 777 captain, and Editor-in-Chief Robert Goyer, but rival cable channel Fox News has a potent new weapon in its arsenal for covering aviation […]

The FAA’s decision to ban Internet ride-sharing websites like AirPooler and Flytenow is hardly surprising given the Department of Transportation’s tight restrictions on “holding out” for air transportation services. As a private pilot you can accept money to fly your friends to Spokane for a wedding you’re all attending, but if you advertise that same […]

It’s a beautiful day and you’re enjoying the view from your cockpit. There is not a burble of turbulence in the air and you have a 15-knot tailwind pushing you along. So far it’s a perfect flight. But suddenly you smell smoke in the cockpit. You look around trying to determine where the smell is […]

The fire season is upon us and, with severe drought conditions in some parts of the country, it has the potential to be an ugly one. If you’re planning on flying in the late summer and early fall, before any regular precipitation starts to fall, you need to be aware of the fire potential and […]

Twenty years ago, the idea of carrying sophisticated digital radar in anything under a medium twin would probably have been met with roars of laughter, but technology has brought amazing advances. Now its possible for even an ultralight pilot to use the Internet to access essentially the same tools that are available to forecasters.

Two business associates and I were on the second leg of a three-leg business trip that would carry us from Chino, California, to Las Cruces, New Mexico, to Boulder, Colorado, and then back home. The first leg was one I had made on numerous occasions because my company had several customers in the New Mexico […]

The warm wind through the steel brace wires generated a distinct whistle over the rumble of the Stearman’s big radial engine as we followed our shadow up and over the rolling green hills. The prop churned the summer air and flung it across the open cockpit, beating it against my head in a steady, rhythmic […]

There’s been a lot of nervous hand wringing over the idea of letting more recreational pilots self-certify that they are fit for flight by forgoing the formal FAA medical process. Christopher Hart, the acting head of the National Transportation Safety Board, told lawmakers recently he is “very concerned about pilots flying without adequate medical standards,” […]

Here’s a story with an interesting twist. Flying reader Maurice Cabirac shares his run-in with an unexpected aircraft in the sky. For a midair collision, the incident had a rather unexpected ending. My student, a 70-year-old friend, and I were shooting touch-and-gos when on one of our takeoffs our airspeed indicator went completely to zero. […]