Search Results for: Cessna 172

__You may be one of many people with a passion for flying who think that learning to fly is unachievable. But before you hang up your dream, you need to explore all your options. The number of ways to learn is limited, and for most people, it requires some financial resources. But there are other […]

Kick the tires, light the fires.” So goes a popular, flippant saying about preflight inspections. Most of the time, thats what we and various accident reports would label an “inadequate preflight inspection.” Sometimes-immediately after stopping long enough to drop off or load a passenger, for example-it might be adequate. After all, we just flew it in here-its a perfectly good airplane; why bother risking burnt fingers to check the engine oil or soiling our clothes to check tire pressure? Indeed, we dont go to such trouble when getting in a car; why are we conducting an inspection at all? Thats easy: Because despite the overall safety of general aviation, regardless of our comfort with flying and/or with the specific airplane, the hard truth is that airplanes are terribly unforgiving of mechanical imperfection.

A look at one of the big names in flight training.

(June 2011) A lot of pilots have heard the name American Flyers. After all, the company has been in business for more than 60 years. But not every pilot knows that the company has grown to the point that it today can provide just about every kind of flight training imaginable to just about every […]

(June 2011) There are good reasons that the Piper Archer is an airplane commonly found in flight school fleets. Its stable flight characteristics and simple design make it an excellent trainer. And with enough speed to get you where you want to go, but not too much to get you in trouble, as well as […]

Bethany Whitfield joined Flying in April 2011. The daughter of a commercial airline and retired Air Force pilot, Bethany was introduced to the world of aviation at a very young age. After graduating from the University of Notre Dame in the spring of 2009 with a degree in English, Bethany started pilot training with the […]

Despite having logged 21,000 hours over the years, for Emily Warner, her most recent flight was a special one. That’s because Warner, reportedly the first female commercial airline pilot hired by a U.S. scheduled airline, organized the flight to fulfill the last wish of a long-time friend and fellow aviator who has been suffering from […]

(May 2011) IN THE MARCH ISSUE OF Flying, On the Record reported on the crash of a Cessna 172S Skyhawk in January 2010, about 20 miles north of Bangor, Maine. The pilot had picked up the brand-new airplane in Independence, Kansas, and flown it to Bangor, where an additional fuel tank was installed for a […]

When you look back at the historical arc of light general aviation, a few airplanes stand out as being so important that their introductions changed the way we flew and the way we looked at flying. At the certain risk of leaving out a few favorites, you can’t talk about the history of light aviation […]

(March 2011) ON OCCASION, I AM ASKED if we airline types actually monitor guard frequency — 121.5. My stock answer is “Of course.” And for the most part, I’m telling the truth. However, in some circumstances it’s not practical. What are those circumstances? I don’t want to speak for all my colleagues, but below 10,000 […]