Pilot Proficiency

The phone rang and rang. It was well after 11 p.m. in Tampa, Florida, and I was deeply asleep. Though I had spent 40-plus years as a surgeon and was accustomed to calls at any hour, I thought I was done with all that. “I have your patient here,” said a man — a gastroenterologist. […]

On paper, it looks like a very doable day: Depart from your home base of Scottsdale, Arizona (KSDL) in your Cirrus SR22T by 7:30 a.m., fly 224 nm to North Las Vegas Airport (KVGT) for a 10 a.m. business meeting at the Stratosphere, head 100 nm east to check in at your St. George, Utah, […]

Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you’ve likely seen some type of anti-texting-while-driving campaign, even where it has not yet been outlawed. While it’s obvious that taking your eyes off the road while driving can lead to collisions, it’s also human nature to multitask — tune the radio, drink coffee or read that “urgent” […]

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.

NextGens prime objective is to improve the flexibility and efficiency of our National Airspace System (NAS) to accommodate increasing traffic. This is possible only if your trip receives NextGen support from preflight to engine shutdown. Called trajectory-based operation or TBO, you will one day preflight by selecting one of several near-optimal trajectories accounting for weather, traffic, obstructions, special use airspace and more. Nice, eh?

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 […]