Search Results for: Cessna 172

Laura Mayo is a lover of all things that fly, especially airplanes. “I have devoted most of my education and field experience to birds, and now I get to fly with them,” she says. Mayo earned a bachelor’s degree in fisheries and wildlife sciences from Oregon State University in 2017, and has worked and volunteered […]

Flying brings pilots into all kinds of unexpected meteorological hazards. Normally we present you with introductory articles about these topics so you can understand what they are, where they occur, and how they work. But sometimes presenting an actual case study from NTSB reports really drives the point home. We see the hazard vividly from the perspective of those who faced this same sort of trouble. We can see actual data reconstructed from that day, challenging us to ask questions for, hopefully, a safer outcome for ourselves.

In our March issue, a short article about the Vulcanair V1.0 — an Italian four-seater strongly resembling a Cessna 172 — mentioned that it uses “a steel-frame and aluminum structure, which was the standard for decades.” I beg to differ. It’s true that the Vulcanair has a steel frame under its aluminum skin — I […]

An aircraft accident would seem like an easy thing to identify: Look for the smoking crater with a few pieces of empennage sticking out, right? Okay, that one probably qualifies. But the national statistics are derived from a very specific definition of accident thats not based on either the events immediate effects on airworthiness or the projected cost of repairs. Airplanes can be and often are scrapped for damage that would cost more to fix than their hulls are worth but still doesnt qualify as substantial enough to merit reporting. Conversely, damage that does qualify sometimes goes unnoticed by the pilots who inflicted it, only to be discovered on a later pre-flight inspection.

A student pilot who was training at Fullerton Airport in southern California is in major trouble after an incident on Sunday. Too eager for his first solo, the man took a Cessna 172 from a local flying club without permission, but was unable to successfully complete his mission. Fullerton’s airport manager Brendan O’Reilly said the […]

#plane lands on a Huntington Beach street #California pic.twitter.com/bUPrgug7rm — Nepareizais (@Nepareizais) June 3, 2018 A student pilot flying a Cessna 172 in Southern California made a flawless emergency landing on a busy Huntington Beach street after losing power and radioing a distress call to John Wayne Airport tower last Friday. In a tense call […]

While conducting flight reviews and stage checks for students working toward various airman certificates, Im finding pilots who do not have a strong understanding of the operation and limitations of light aircraft braking systems. Ive also noticed many pilots misuse the brakes in landing and taxiing. For the former, brakes are incorrectly and/or unnecessarily applied immediately following landing. For the latter, excessive engine power requires the pilot to ride the brakes to control the airplane. Both are examples of poor technique.

“November 12345 is cleared for the visual approach to Runway One Left, traffic is a Boeing 737 on a seven-mile final behind you, maintain best speed, contact the tower….Fly into a Class C or Class B primary airport and youll eventually be asked to keep your speed up because of inbound traffic behind you. Do it IFR, even at some Class D facilities, and youd best be very ready to mix with the heavy iron, which easily could be approaching 100 knots faster than your flivver can manage.

While I was driving to the airport a layer of radiation fog condensed and became a pattern-smashing iron plate by flight time. While waiting for tower to cut the next ATIS, I poked around weather forecasts and noticed that the MOS forecast predicted, correctly, low ceilings for the rest of the morning. Argh!

Much of general aviation activity in piston-powered airplanes is for recreation-the proverbial $100 hamburger ($1000?) on nice sunny weekends. Still, there are many general aviation pilots who fly-using the technical phrase-for the furtherance of business. Were not talking banner tows, flight instruction, skydiving, or true commercial endeavors. Furtherance of business denotes those operations that are only incidental to that business or employment. (14 CFR 61.113)