Search Results for: Citation X

Note to readers: What follows could be considered obnoxious. Or maybe it is a cautionary tale. It is a story of a man about to turn 72 who has been flying for 50 years and owned airplanes almost continuously since 1972. This is a description of this man’s thought processes as he navigates the realities […]

August 1, 2017, Phoenix, Ariz.Grumman AA-1B TrainerAt about 1300 Mountain time, the airplane was substantially damaged when it impacted terrain shortly after takeoff. Both the flight instructor and student pilot sustained serious injuries. Visual conditions prevailed.According to witnesses, after the airplane lifted off and was in its initial climb to the west, the wings started to rock back and forth. The airplane began to descend, struck the airport’s western perimeter fence and collided with terrain before coming to rest on a road bordering the airport.

While most of us probably feel fortunate to be able to fly any kind of general aviation aircraft, most of us also have fantasies about owning and flying more expensive machines, including jets. A small number of us achieve that goal and obtain certification to operate small jets single-pilot. But the safety record of these operations is mixed. Some recent accidents point to gaps in the training and checking associated with single-pilot type ratings.

There are people who claim their cell phone works everywhere, even while cruising along at 10,000 feet in their Baron, or PC-12. Experts will tell you of course that while there’s always the chance an airborne phone might grab a scrap or two of cell service in flight, it’s never reliable enough to regularly send […]

Sandpoint, Idaho-based Tamarack Aerospace has announced it is working on STCs for additional platforms for its ATLAS Active Winglets, which significantly improve the performance of airplanes flying in the flight levels. Tamarack has begun the process for the Cessna Citation 560XL series of airplanes: the Excel, XLS and XLS+. One major benefit of the ATLAS […]

Settled into the left seat at our final cruise altitude of 26,000 feet, we were showing a true airspeed of 304 knots and burning about 700 pounds of jet-A per hour. As the lush rolling landscape of central Pennsylvania slid by far below, a nagging question had entered my mind. What is it about the […]

On a cold night in ­early spring, I took off from Lunken Airport in 72B, my beloved (I think) Cessna 180. I came back to climb power at 500 feet agl and the engine began running rough, missing and losing power — which sort of caught my attention. So, I pulled on the carburetor heat […]

The pilot shortage we’ve all been told would materialize any day? It’s finally a reality. Don’t believe it? Just look at Horizon Air, which canceled hundreds of flights this summer because it couldn’t find qualified pilots to fly its Q400 turboprops. Or SkyWest, whose CEO recently warned Congress not of a looming pilot shortage but […]

Think of the stick shaker/pusher found in transport-category aircraft as a bit of a lazy pilot’s angle of attack indicator. Should the flying pilot become distracted enough that they fail to notice an increasing angle of attack, to a point where the wing is about to cease producing sufficient lift, an airplane equipped with a […]

After only a little more than a decade in the business, turbine aircraft sales firm jetAVIVA continues to expand its breadth in the used aircraft market. Just about a year after the company acquired Kansas Aircraft Corporation, which focused on piston and turboprop sales, jetAVIVA has taken over Jet Quest – a Georgetown, Texas-based company […]