Pilot Proficiency

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 […]

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 […]

The days learning about flying from John and Martha King by watching VHS tapes are long gone, but after more than 40 years evolving their pilot courses, King Schools has said goodbye to physical media and is now delivering 100 percent of its pilot courses online. “We have followed two rules that have kept us […]

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University recently asked pilots in a number of certificate categories how well they understand weather information presented to them in written and graphical form. The NTSB in 2014 labeled identifying and communicating elements of hazardous weather as one of its Top 10 safety priorities, calling weather, “a frequent cause or contributing factor to […]

Albert Einstein is reputed as saying that everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler. In March, Manage Your Electrons, attempted to explain certain concepts and principles without overwhelming readers unfamiliar with batteries and electrical systems. In so doing, we may have violated Einsteins directive, because weve gotten a lot of mail complaining at our oversimplification. So, here is a more detailed explanation of much of what we conveyed in that article.