Pilot Proficiency

The 77-year-old, 8,000 hour pilot-owner of a Cessna 182, accompanied by his wife, flew from Anchorage to Juneau, Alaska, on a July afternoon. The couple was in the process of moving to Hoonah, about 31 nm west-southwest of Juneau; the ostensible purpose of this trip was to position the 182 there before the start of […]

Hold on. I know the title is trite. Your enthusiasm for reading further may be at a low point, but hang on for a minute. I mean to persuade you that this is something other than a cliched rehash of admonishments to stabilize your approach. It is hard to believe that, after flying continuously for […]

Detailed weather conditions at airports are easy to obtain through a metar, ATIS, AWOS or ASOS. Conditions such as winds, temperatures, cloud conditions and visibilities are measured by ground-based equipment and can be obtained through frequencies, phone numbers, iPad apps and some panel-mounted avionics. But weather conditions are harder to measure in the air. That’s […]

As we passed our first waypoint of 20 degrees longitude westbound over the North Atlantic, my copilot and I studied the TCAS symbol on the navigation display. Another airplane was approaching us from behind at the 5 o’clock position. Our 777 was cruising at FL 390. The other airplane was 1,000 feet below at FL […]

Sarah Yensen and Ted Lester, pilots who have been dating for several years and who have flown together to Oshkosh from the Boston area six different times, recently had what Yensen described as an “in-flight incident” for which she determined there was no checklist. Yensen, who works at Lincoln Labs, and Lester, who works at […]

The following is an excerpt from official NTSB summaries of general aviation accidents in the United States. _ _ NTSB investigators either traveled in support of this investigation or conducted a significant amount of investigative work without any travel, and used data obtained from various sources to prepare this aircraft accident report. Cessna 172R Wendover, […]

Complacency is one of the biggest enemies pilots face. As we go about our business accomplishing flight-related tasks, over time they can become rote actions performed without the necessary forethought to ensure we’re not acting out of habit. The NTSB is warning pilots of several recent incidents where pilots pulled a lever or hit a […]

The following article is from the January 2005 print issue. “Nope,” I said. “No way. There’s no way that a turn downwind, or upwind, or in any other direction, is any different from a turn in still air.” “Well, sonny,” said the Old-Timer, “maybe out your way the air’s made of different stuff. But I’ve […]

** | |Illustrations by Chris Gall**| In Joni Mitchell’s 1969 song “Both Sides, Now,” a haunting and sentimental little earwig, the singer laments that after looking at clouds “from both sides now,” she really doesn’t know them very well at all. The same could be said for many pilots. Even after thousands of hours in […]

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