Pilot Proficiency

A lot has happened to the two greatest careers imaginable (to me) since I fell in love with each of them. When I started medical school 53 years ago with the intent of becoming a surgeon, such a career promised interesting work, a middle-class income and a respected role in society. When I got certificate […]

In 1986, I flew a Beechcraft Baron 58 each night carrying canceled bank checks from Baltimore to Richmond, Virginia; Charlotte, North Carolina; Philadelphia and back to BWI, departing at about 10 p.m. and returning by 6 a.m. the next morning. I was part of a network of check-carrying general aviation aircraft that crisscrossed the nation […]

I still believe my instrument-rating check ride was my toughest, but then maybe it just seemed that way because the technology in the Cessna 172 I flew was pretty basic: two communications radios, two VORs, an ADF and a transponder. Keeping an airplane upright in the old days demanded constant brain work to scan the […]

Continued VFR into IMC is the scourge of general ­aviation. Year after year, it is a leading cause of fatal accidents—almost four times deadlier than encounters with thunderstorms and icing combined. If anything, these numbers underestimate the problem, since many “­successful” VFR-into-IMC flights never show up in the National Transportation Safety Board statistics, but instead […]

A human brain slowly deprived of its normal oxygen supply, called hypoxia— especially if it happens to someone in command of an airplane–can create strange behavior the affected aviator may not even recognize. The FAA says the most common causes of hypoxia in pilots are: flying non-pressurized aircraft above 10,000 ft without supplemental oxygen, rapid […]

But a standard brief alone does not satisfy 91.103. If IFR or flying outside the airport vicinity, we are expected to also know fuel requirements, alternates if the planned flight cannot be completed, and any traffic delays advised by ATC. We must know the runway lengths, including takeoff and landing distance data if an Airplane Flight Manual exists. Else, we are told to make do using other reliable information appropriate to the aircraft including aircraft performance.

The root cause of wind is the unequal heating of the earth. We usually take it for granted that tropical areas are hot while polar areas are cold. But whether youre in Greenland or Venezuela, the sunlight is the same. Its the angle at which the suns rays hit the ground that makes the difference. Near the equator, the summer sun is at very high angles. But, in Greenland the summer sun never gets higher than about 30-40 degrees above the horizon, spreading the energy over a larger area, reducing heating of the ground and air.

We all have a different way to go about our flight planning, but most of it is along the lines of where to go, how high, how much fuel, weight and balance, etc. You factor it all into the plan, but at some point youll add that X for some bad weather and a re-route. Maybe the weather is fine where you are departing but not good where you are going, or vice versa. Depending on the mission, what are your options? It all comes down to a go/no-go on what youre comfortable doing and not doing. This is the typical process regardless of whether youre filing VFR or IFR.

Every afternoon my partner Nancy and I walk around Echo Park Lake. Two miles from ­downtown Los Angeles, it is not Walden Pond. It is man-made, cement lined, ­shallow and ringed by a paved walk on which multicolored streams of ­people, old and young, some ­strolling, some rolling, flow in at least two directions, maybe more. On […]

For what seemed like forever—OK, so it was four weeks—I was housebound late last winter, hobbling around with a humongous cast on my right foot. Weather was consistently gray, cold and brutal in the Ohio Valley and moping around the house isn’t my style, but I got through, reasonably sane, thanks to some great memories. […]