Pilot Proficiency

The airplane looked absolutely the same. It was the same Piper Arrow II with the blue-and-silver accent ribbon that flowed from the tail to the nose against a white background. It was the same airplane that was displayed on almost 200 hours of my logbook pages. I smiled knowing that my former career as an […]

The voice behind me was a familiar one: “You pilots love your toys, don’t you?” I turned around in the coffee shop to see my neighbor’s smiling face staring at the flight-simulation app I was playing on my iPhone. I smiled and nodded as the wave of his hand said, “Go back to your game.” […]

The Grand Bahamas Inter- national airport (MYGF) in Freeport, Bahamas, a privately owned facility, is frequented by nearly a dozen airlines including Delta, Delta Connection, American Eagle, Silver Airways and Bahamasair operating a variety aircraft types. Because tourism is the primary economic driver, be on the lookout for plenty of aircraft in the area from […]

These early pilots depended on a network of rotating beacon towers at four-mile intervals, like lighthouses in the sky. These facilities, operated by the federal government, used lamps powered by cylinders of acetylene. Simply by following the route from beacon to beacon, a pilot could arrive safely at the destination. Weather could be avoided because the planes flew at low altitudes, and illuminated diversion airfields were placed at frequent intervals. If the pilot felt things were deteriorating, he could be on the ground in less than 10 minutes.

This year’s NTSB Most Wanted List included a few changes from the 2017-2018 edition. Noticeably missing from the 2019 list was loss of control inflight, an issue that remains the top killer in aviation. The NTSB Most Wanted List was created as the Board’s primary advocacy tool to identify top safety improvements that can be […]

If you started flying before the iPad was introduced in 2010 or, even longer ago, before the early 2000s, when aviation-specific portable-flight-bag tablets first entered the market, you remember the days when you got a workout each time you went flying from carrying a hefty bag filled with paper charts, plotters, instrument approach plates and […]

Well, the cops say, “nobody knows what goes on in a squad car.” And all married people know that no one outside ever knows what goes on in a marriage. My particular racket is show business, and I can report, from 40 years’ experience, that nobody who wasn’t there knows what happened on a movie […]

The original Cincinnati Frisch’s Big Boy restaurant, which opened in the 1930s, even today sports a somewhat modified but still charming version of the original retro airplane on its large outdoor sign. This popular hamburger joint (and much more) is on a busy street, about 2 miles north and slightly right of Lunken Airport’s southwest […]

Jean-Claude was in the left seat. He was senior to me, but I was flying. We were near the equator, where Mermoz and Guillaumet had once flown — but they, poor fellows, had not been at 35,000 feet! We entered the clouds at what looked like a soft spot in a squall line. At first […]

It’s a rainy, blustery October night in New York City, and the lineup for takeoff here at Kennedy International looks to be a good mile long. Lots of heavy metal around, much of it headed across the pond with us. We’re the “light twin” of the bunch in our Boeing 767-300ER. I’m in the right […]