Pilot Proficiency

I was flying to Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, for parking at the Dassault Falcon Jet flight ops department. When I was about two miles to the northeast of the field for Runway 24, the controller told me to do a 360 for jet traffic landing on Runway 19. Old Bonanzas are great short field […]

Once upon a time, the campfire story goes, when aviation was young and fliers were adventurers on the edge, pilots wanting to make a living in this new field couldn’t just sit around and wait for passengers and students to find them. They had to go to where the people were. And so they got […]

Driving a car is not that difficult. The instructor may have a few tense moments while teaching someone how to drive, but once you have a few miles under your tires, hopping in the car is not a stress-inducing event. Aside from a few people who are into off-road driving, most people never drive on […]

Last week, the FAA announced it was merging two safety programs for efficiency and to “help guide safety decisions” in the future. Pilots and Air Traffic Controllers have long been able to confess their gaffes in a “non-punitive environment” through the FAA’s Safety Action Programs — ASAP (Aviation Safety Action Program) for pilots and ATSAP […]

Each month, Flying answers questions about the new Sport Pilot/Light-Sport Aircraft rule with assistance from the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA), the authority on the opportunities available within the category commonly known as “Sport Pilot”: Q: Can the owner of a light-sport airplane add new equipment such as avionics, instruments or additional lighting? A: New equipment […]

Several readers responded to my posting last week on the phrase “Over and Out.” Brian Long suggested that “Over and Out” could be appropriate, after all. For instance, Brian suggests, when the conversation is ready to end: “Both parties should sign off, so the first party provides ‘(callsign) over and out’ to indicate his/her signing […]

The month of May was my first full schedule as the new kid on the 777. Priorities dictated that I have specific days off. My wife and I would be celebrating our anniversary. The seniority cards dealt a five-day trip to São Paulo, Brazil. I’ve never been overjoyed with the idea of flying all night […]

IT HAPPENED LAST MAY, DURING an air race in South Africa. An airplane was descending toward a turn point in a valley when the pilot of a following airplane saw what appeared to be paper scattering behind it. An instant later, a shattered wing separated from the fuselage, falling to earth a hundred yards from […]

There are some A-B-Cs of radio procedure and technique that might have gotten lost in the cobwebs of your memory. It could be that you’ve picked up some bad habits; or lost touch with some of your better ones. If a little brush-up is in order, try whipping out the Aeronautical Information Manual — aka […]

You’ve given us a litany of accidents in which the pilots did something stupid,” pointed out one of the pilots of the Glens Falls Pilots and Owners Association to which I had just presented a program I call “Good Accidents.” “Why do pilots do something stupid?” he asked. “Not stupid,” someone else suggested, “but certainly […]