Search Results for: Cessna 172

One special category of pilots are those for whom going fast is important. Why? Because speed is relative. At altitude on a severe clear day, there’s little sensation of speed. We have to get close to something before our speed becomes apparent. And the risk with getting close to something is we might hit it. While untrained pilots who engage in such risky behaviors aren’t the norm, there’s enough of them that the practice has its own term: unwarranted low flying. Its use apparently has fallen out of favor, but the phrase “unwarranted low flying” has populated numerous NTSB reports over the years.

The pilot purchased the airplane the day prior to the accident. He departed the airport and performed maneuvers in the local area, then returned and completed four normal wheel landings. On the fifth landing, at about 30 mph, the tailwheel settled to the runway. When the tailwheel touched down, the pilot stated he felt a rumble “like a machine gun” and the airplane veered to the right. He applied left rudder, and the airplane subsequently veered left off the runway, the right main landing gear collapsed and the right wing spar sustained substantial damage when it impacted terrain. Examination revealed the tailwheel was cocked to the right, perpendicular to the fuselage.

Blue Line Aviation has broken ground on a $13-million facility at Johnston Regional Airport in North Carolina, expanding its footprint from its Raleigh-area base. The flight training organization has two locations currently, at the Raleigh-Durham International Airport (RDU) and at Johnston (JNX). Operations at JNX will be suspended during the construction of the new facility, […]

uAvionix is working on a wingtip ADS-B Out device that will work with satellite-based ADS-B systems that will be used in several countries and the U.S. system, which relies on ground stations. The skyBeacon X will pack upward and downward pointing antennas into a compact integrated device that will also replace a wingtip position light. The development project was spurred by contact from Canadian pilots who could be required to install ADS-B Out as early as 2023. Nav Canada, the not-for-profit corporation that supplies air traffic services in Canada, will use the Aireon satellite system for ADS-B surveillance and that requires antennas pointed skyward. Most ADS-B systems now available for GA aircraft are designed for the U.S. terrestrial system and the few that do offer the so-called antenna diversity required in Canada are significantly more expensive. uAvionix hopes to have the system ready for sale in 2021.

However, the FAAs ADS-B installation date of January 1st, 2020 was nearly a decade away, and he faced a hostile audience. Numerous pilots seated around us hit him on point after point. The price of the transponder units. The installation and certification headache. The lack of ADS-B coverage (at the time). The overall cost-vs.-benefit scenario. They clung to the if it aint broke, dont fix it theme. The company rep did his best, but it was a frustrating battle.

The event perhaps most demonstrative of what can happen as an aircraft ages occurred on April 28, 1988, over Hawaii. Thats when an Aloha Airlines Boeing 737-200 operating in scheduled passenger service as Flight 243 between Hilo and Honolulu lost part of its cabin roof while in cruise at FL240. The crew successfully landed the airplane after diverting to Maui. Of the 89 passengers and six crewmembers aboard, there was one fatality-a flight attendant who was swept overboard during the decompression event.

Remember the last time someone mentioned a bounced landing? Might not have been that long ago because we all bounce them in now and again. But somehow bouncing the landing in a Cessna 172 just doesn’t seem all that serious to most pilots, assuming of course the bounce didn’t begin by impacting the runway with […]

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 […]

A witness observed the accident airplane at about 30 feet agl without its landing gear extended, and it was not extended when the airplane began to flare. Examination revealed the runway surface showed striated gouges and two long skid marks tracing the airplanes path from the runway.

Joan Kerwin was eager to fly airplanes when she graduated in 1950 from Joliet Township High School southwest of Chicago. The closest she could come in the early 50s was a job as a flight attendant – they called them stewardesses back then – with United Airlines. Kerwin left her job sooner than planned however […]