Search Results for: Cessna 172

A favorite IPC question: When is an alternate required? The answer: Always. But like most rules, there is an exception. In a style only a bureaucrat can appreciate, the exception is listed before the rule.

Early July saw a fiery crash of an Asiana B-777. That was followed by Southwests unsuccessful nosewheel landing and a UPS flight hitting the ground. While the NTSB grinds toward its final reports, lessons for us are emerging.

Flying Magazine was among the first to try out the new Safe Flight SCx angle-of-attack indicator designed for the kit-built and experimental markets, putting the unit to the test in the company’s Cessna 172 right before Oshkosh. After our demo the only thing we disliked like about the system is that it’s not available for […]

If you, like many pilots around the country, own a Cessna 172 Skyhawk with a run-out engine, you may soon have a new option when you reach TBO. Superior Air Parts has partnered with Christiansen Aviation in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on a supplemental type certificate program for the new 180-horsepower Vantage Engine to be installed in […]

You’re probably familiar with your airplane’s primary control surfaces, what they are, where they are and how they work. (If not, now’s a good time to research the topic.) According to the FAA, primary controls are those “required to control an aircraft safely during flight,” and are the rudder, ailerons and the elevator/stabilator of a conventional airplane. The pitch-control surfaces of a canard-configured airplane usually are considered primary controls, also.

Recent general aviation and air carrier accidents

I had my Bonanza set up perfectly for the straight-in ILS Runway 22 approach at Malabo, Equatorial Guinea (FGSL), following a short, 63-nm flight across the Bight of Biafra from Douala, Cameroon (FKKD). It was actually a rare clear day near the equator and I could easily see the nearly 10,000 foot Pico de Basile only 10 miles south of Malabo, certainly a potential terrain hazard to be managed if it had been actual instrument conditions and I had been concerned about the missed approach. That would be one of many risks to be managed in this environment.

Two separate airplane crashes in Central Florida, one in Daytona Beach and one in Merritt Island, claimed the lives of four people Monday night. In Daytona a student and an instructor died in a fiery crash shortly after takeoff from Daytona Beach International. Witnesses say the Cessna 172 they were flying appeared to lose engine […]

Jan. 21, 2000. 5:30 a.m. I huddle over the wheel of the tug, savoring the warmth of the dashboard heater though it adds to my early-morning stupor. I’m not sure when I fell asleep last night, but it had to be mere hours before the alarm jolted my head from its resting place on my […]

Why can one airplane take off and land on short runways while another requires significantly longer takeoff and landing distances?