Pilot Proficiency

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 […]

_(__April 2011)_ BY NOW I HOPE YOU’VE heard of the plan by a company called LightSquared to install as many as 40,000 stations across the continental United States that would transmit on the frequency band directly adjacent to the one used by GPS. LightSquared’s plan is to create, using this quiet little corner of the […]

(April 2011) REMEMBER THE RIDE BOARDS at school? Students with cars would post notices of where they were headed during school breaks and invite other students to ride along. At the same time students looking for rides would post their trip requests. The system, with the notices thumbtacked to a bulletin board, worked well, and […]

We’ve all seen the images from last week’s Sun ‘n Fun Fly-In. Broken wings, crunched elevators and rudders, and crushed windshields resulted from an EF-1 tornado that hit the Lakeland Linder Airport on Thursday, March 31. Nothing can prevent an airplane from being damaged from the force of a tornado, but there are ways to […]

Like a lot of people with a love for aviation, I’d definitely say I’m an adventure seeker. Mind you, that doesn’t mean I fit the daredevil mold. For instance, while I’d be the first person to join a group traveling to see the Inca ruins in Machu Picchu, I’d probably be one of the last […]

I had the opportunity to ride along with Tecnam demo pilot Andrew Jones in the P92 Eaglet out of Winter Haven (KGIF), where it was based, during one of the company’s Showcase Fly-Bys at Sun ‘n Fun last week. If the term Showcase Fly-By is unfamiliar, I’m certain that if you’ve ever been at the […]

(March 2011) — PAYING HEED TO THE Scottish poet Robert Burns, who said: “The best laid schemes of mice and men go often askew,” I counsel those who come to me for flight training not to think in terms of “if,” but rather “when,” so that they are prepared for that moment when things go […]

(March 2011) TOSSING OBJECTS FROM flying machines, stuff like flour bombs, candy, inflated balloons, the ashes of friends, rolls of toilet paper and Tootsie Pop wrappers (yeah, I know that’s tacky), an art reserved to pilots of relatively simple, unpressurized airplanes, is surely one of flying’s greatest joys. C’mon, what kind of fun can you […]

(March 2011) ON OCCASION, I AM ASKED if we airline types actually monitor guard frequency — 121.5. My stock answer is “Of course.” And for the most part, I’m telling the truth. However, in some circumstances it’s not practical. What are those circumstances? I don’t want to speak for all my colleagues, but below 10,000 […]