Pilot Proficiency

I can’t really say I know Sarah Rovner, because we’ve never actually met. We’re both airline pilots, we have a bunch of mutual friends in common, we presented at the same aviation conference (one day apart) and we’ve chatted online and on the telephone. But mostly I “know” Sarah because we’re Facebook friends and she […]

Eight of us had flown into Borrego Springs, California, for lunch. As Martha and I helped the folks from Australia back into the airplane and gave them our preflight briefing for the return trip, I explained, “We are about to challenge the air traffic control system a bit. We will pop up in this small […]

With two Cessna 172s, Flyinn had picked us up at the Queenstown Airport after shuttling our bags over from the main terminal to the general aviation side of the field. Jay and Sandy Rud, our good friends from the Chicago area, were still somewhere behind us, navigating the same bumpy sky in the other 172, […]

In August 2015, a Florence, South Carolina, doctor, 51, left his home field early in the morning on a vacation trip whose eventual destination was the Grand Canyon.

Relevant Discussion: FAR part 107, AC 107-2 Operating Requirements: Avoid manned aircraft, and never operate in a careless or reckless manner. The drone must remain within sight. Alternatively, if you use first-person view or similar technology, you must have a visual observer always keep your aircraft within unaided sight (for example, no binoculars are allowed). […]

To those unfamiliar with formation flying, flight within a wingspan’s distance of another airplane looks eerily similar to an imminent collision. And collisions in airplanes generally don’t end well. But, in some cases, formation flying actually presents a lower risk than flying alone. And besides that, it is some of the most fun and rewarding […]

May 1-31 is Learn to Fly month, a month-long effort to help flight training providers attract new pilots. This year, the drum beat is even louder than in the past as the shortage of career pilots continues to make news. Of course, Learn to Fly month doesn’t focus only on career aviators. The efforts will […]

Aircraft ownership is expensive. Between fuel, insurance, hangar or tiedown expenses and possibly a loan payment, by the time you get to the annual inspection, there’s a temptation to do it as cheaply as possible — to do the minimum and skip preventive maintenance actions. Occasionally, aircraft owners will even admit such things to friends […]

Earlier today at the Aero Friedrichshafen expo in Germany, ForeFlight announced that it is introducing its popular aviation app to the European market. The app will be available in Europe later this summer. “We are combining an array of high-quality European data, our Eurocontrol-integrated flight planning and filing capabilities, and a broad suite of navigation […]

Pilots are imperfect by design. We’re human, after all. On any given flight, a pilot is faced with dozens of interrelated decisions that guide the airplane to its destination, hopefully intact and without incident. Most of the time, we make good decisions and our flights end safely, even if we execute some elements of the […]