Pilot Proficiency

The cause of the deadly Turbo Commander crash in Arizona’s Superstition Mountains last Wednesday night won’t be known for some time, but that doesn’t mean it’s too early to glean some lessons from this tragedy. As any pilot who has flown in the airspace near Phoenix (or any city surrounded by mountains) knows, seeing the […]

(November 2011) Remember when the examiner handed you your temporary pilot’s certificate and said something on the order of “this is just a license to learn”? Most of us begin, after pocketing our hard-won certificate and no longer under the aegis of our instructor, a period of self-taught learning as we experience the nuts and […]

Part of my Thanksgiving weekend was spent renewing my CFI certificate. While it is a bit of a hassle to go through this hoop every couple of years, it is an important task for me regardless of the fact that I don’t do much instructing anymore. I have met several pilots who have let their […]

(November 2011) It is a bracing feeling to stand up and deny accepted knowledge. So bracing, in fact, that I try to do it as often as possible. I have argued (countless times) that downwind turns are no different from upwind ones, dismissed as a wives’ tale the common notion that the horizontal tail of […]

Thanksgiving is a wonderful time to go for a fun flight with friends and family. If you’re taking someone up for the first time, it’s important to prepare him or her for the journey with a comprehensive preflight briefing. This conversation goes far beyond explaining how to enter and exit the airplane and use the […]

After months of uncertainty in Washington regarding the future of several aviation-related programs, President Obama has signed an appropriations bill for 2012 that provides funding for the FAA and reinstates the Block Aircraft Registry Request (BARR) program, ensuring the privacy of aircraft owners and operators. The signing of the bill serves as temporary relief for […]

An aviation rulemaking committee recently concluded there is no justification for a new mandate requiring automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) “In” technology, recommending instead that the FAA promote voluntary equipage for the “foreseeable future.” That’s great news for general aviation, but it doesn’t mean you should cross this game-changing technology off your avionics must-have list. The […]

If you don’t venture on sullen skies, You never come to sunkissed valleys. If your palms have never been moist, Your heart has never thrilled. If you have never been afraid, You have never been courageous. Gill Robb Wilson, The Airman’s World When my sister Mary and I started flying, we learned to check aviation […]

(November 2011) Opening scene: Inside a B777 cockpit approximately 250 miles off the eastern coastline of Japan. The first officer is massaging the right touch pad of the display unit with his index finger. The cursor arrow hovers in the vicinity of the emergency checklist page now shown on the lower EICAS (engine instrument and […]

(November 2011) In November 1954, having accumulated a bit more than 26 solo hours flying 65 hp Cubs and Aeroncas, and having become an aircraft owner several months before, I was supremely confident in my flying abilities. Nevertheless I deferred to my medical school classmate, Ed, a veteran, older by 10 years than most others […]