Pilot Proficiency

Looking for something for Father’s Day? Here’s a great aviation gift idea for those special dads. In celebration of Father’s Day on June 15, Flying is giving away 3 copies of “Flight: 100 Greatest Aircraft” for the next three weeks until May 31, 2014. All you have to do is fill out the form to […]

In creating our list of the 25 Most Beautiful Airplanes ever there were a number of contenders that just missed the cut. And by just missed, I mean that some actually made it onto the original list only to be bumped off by others. If there’s an airplane you thought should have been included that […]

When I was a teenager learning to fly I spent a fair amount of time working as a line boy at Teterboro Airport. I don’t think I ever deserved a tip, but I appreciated every time somebody thought enough of the job I did to hand me a few crisp dollar bills. You may have […]

Recipe for disaster: Start with two brothers old enough to know better — one a low time pilot (210 pounds), the other a student pilot (170 pounds) — squeeze them into a Cessna 150, add 3,600 feet of elevation, blend in a lot of darkness, gradually add a crosswind, and then mix with overcast sky. […]

The 600-hour, instrument-rated pilot of a Piper Arrow left Georgia early on a Sunday afternoon for Delaware, where he was scheduled to perform a surgery the following day. The forecast weather at the destination and nearby airports was near minimums; the pilot filed Baltimore/Washington International (BWI) as his alternate. As he approached his filed destination […]

The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, which originally appeared as a section in Flying Magazine as an early attempt to organize pilots for better representation, today celebrates its 75th anniversary. Led today by president and CEO Mark Baker, the organization boasts hundreds of thousands members and advocates for them, fighting for the same kinds of […]

Many lives and limbs have been lost as a result of spinning propellers, either by someone walking into their revolving paths or by someone inadvertently starting an engine by moving a propeller. I recently spoke with a gentleman who was fortunate to walk away from an incident in which his airplane started up briefly as […]

Last week, after enjoying one flyable day in between snowstorms, I gave up on aviating and took myself to the movies. The flick had great reviews and an impressive cast, but it was as gloomy as the weather. I sat for a couple hours and watched a totally dysfunctional family implode — the mother dying […]

The FAA’s draconian blanket ban on “commercial” UAV flying is a joke. An NTSB judge said as much in March by **tossing out a $10,000 FAA fine **against a videographer who made a promotional film for the University of Virginia using a small quadracopter. Others regularly fly similar remote-controlled craft to shoot videos or take […]

When you are at a gathering of pilots, you are surrounded by remarkable people — people just like you. In the United States, less than two-tenths of 1 percent of the population has made the substantial personal commitment of time, effort, money and stress required to learn to fly. To learn to fly, you have […]