Pilot Proficiency

(April 2011) THE DESIRE FOR CERTAIN knowledge drives airplane designers to many decimal places, even though a whiff of wind can blow them all away. And so, when finally, after years of procrastinating, I got my homebuilt’s flaps working, I wanted to measure their effect as exactly as I could. No doubt if I had […]

(April 2011) Coincidentally (maybe) I’m writing this on the anniversary of the day Martin Luther nailed 95 Theses to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral. He was later declared a heretic by the Diet of Worms, a bunch of church guys who met in a German town with a really funny name. It’s possible that posting […]

The taxi run-in between an Air France A380, the largest passenger airplane in the world, and a regional jet at JFK the other night should remind us all how easy it is to bend some metal when all you’re trying to do is get to the departure end of the runway. These taxi surprises of […]

(April 2011) IT WAS PART 2 OF A MONTH’S worth of airplane (commercial and private) travel, and though I was seated in posh surroundings in the nose of a KLM 747-400 bound from Los Angeles to Amsterdam, the prisoners began to stir. Our departure had been delayed more than four hours. I worried about my […]

(April 2011) AFTER WRITING THREE articles on the subject of fatigue I figured I had pretty much covered that topic. Then I started receiving e-mails and phone calls from Flying readers, more than I have ever received before. It is obvious that fatigue is a critical issue for many people. Paul Reeves described his own […]

(April 2011) IT WAS NOT A BIG MISTAKE. I ended up with damage only to my pride and my reputation. But, I took a shortcut, and I learned about flying from that. I grew up on World War I flying books left in my bedroom bookcase by previous generations. I listened to Dad tell of […]

(April 2011) WEIGHT MATTERS. EVEN in the light-sport aircraft world. As I wrote in last month’s column about the LSA categories, the maximum gross weight is one of the key factors in determining whether or not an aircraft meets the FAA’s LSA definition. How did the FAA come to that final 1,320-pound figure? Well, it […]

Peter Thiel, the hedge fund manager and PayPal co-founder, correctly foresaw the dot-com and subprime busts, so when he makes a prediction about the next big bubble that’s likely about to burst, people would be wise to at least listen to what the man has to say. So where does Thiel think the next spectacular […]

My flight in Fat Albert at the recent Sun ‘n Fun Fly-In ranks up there as one of the most bizarre flying experiences I’ve had in my more than decade long aviation career. Strapped to a couch in the cockpit of a highly modified C-130 next to another aviation journalist, I watched crewmembers become airborne […]

(March 2011) — THERE WERE TWO HUDSON River accidents in 2009. In January, Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger and copilot Jeff Skiles did an excellent job of ditching US Airways Flight 1549. There was also a tragic event in August, when a sightseeing helicopter and a Piper Lance collided and nine people perished. For me, these […]