Pilot Proficiency

One of the last weather-caused airline crashes in the United States was American Airlines Flight 1420 in Little Rock on June 1, 1999. As we mark its 20th anniversary, well tie together some of the radar and thunderstorm skills weve learned in previous articles. Youll also see brand-new radar scans of the storm from modern high-resolution display software-which is far more detailed than that in the NTSB report-and well contemplate what you might see if you encounter a similar storm on modern radar today.

Paul Holmes and I first met back in the late 1990s at Miami’s infamous Columbus Day Regatta in Biscayne Bay, a boating weekend of craziness. The regatta actually involves a sailboat race, but most are unaware because of their participation in the side event, which is a massive overnight rafting of boats in all sizes […]

The first free flight of a manned balloon took place, as is well known, in France. The king, who took an interest in the experiments of the Montgolfier brothers, suggested that the passengers on the first manned flight should be two convicts, whom he considered expendable. He was persuaded, however, that the honor of being […]

From the time I was a teenage recruit in the Navy I had always wanted to fly. Some five years later I had my opportunity to get my private pilot’s license. That wasn’t enough for me, so I applied for a G.I. Bill benefit and began working on advanced ratings, eventually earning my CFII, AMEL […]

The ILS 33L at Boston Logan Airport looked decidedly uninviting. The red echoes of rain straddled the approach course and the wind at 3,300 feet was close to 270 degrees at 39 knots, while the wind reported at the field was 350 degrees at 22 knots gusting to 30. The wind shift of 80 degrees […]

There are folks who collect date nails. There is even a publication dedicated to the hobby called Date Nails. What, one might ask, are date nails? These are the 2-inch little fellows which the railroad drove into each of their crossties. There are approximately 800 million crossties in the United States, and each is identified […]

Doug Stewart, the Society of Flight Educators (SAFE) executive director emeritus and a Designated Pilot Examiner, hosted an online forum at last month’s Sun n’ Fun at Lakeland, Florida to discuss the kinds of problems he sees with new flight instructor applicants. He was joined by two other DPEs, Mike Garrison and Bill Ziesenitz. The […]

In 1945, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, precursor of NASA and source of much of our knowledge about practical aerodynamics, published a hefty compendium of airfoil data, NACA Technical Report 824, which later appeared in book form under the title Theory of Wing Sections. The names of the authors, Abbott and von Doenhoff, have […]

A few days ago I met a young man who had just been hired by my airline. He just turned 25 years old, which means he was born in 1994, the very same year I started flying. He’s pretty clearly sharp as a tack, strongly motivated and a hard worker, which accounts for how he […]

Thirty-some years ago, when the FAA was actually paying me to go to Griffin, Georgia, and fly Bob McSwiggan’s DC-3, I heard about this larger-than-life guy named Stan Brock. To hear people talk, he was Ernie Gann, Indiana Jones and Mother Teresa wrapped up into one. A famous, handsome, adventurous Brit living like a monk, […]