Search Results for: DC-3

I could smell the pine trees below as I turned base and the nose of the little taildragger I was piloting pointed toward a sheer rock wall. When I turned final, the runway was still invisible. It was at the end of a narrow gorge that followed down the mountainside. Tracking that line, I continued […]

We call it flying in a black hole — no stars or ground lighting to guide you. You are flying a TP-3, a heavy, lumbering beast of an airplane, and you are just 350 feet above the ground, accelerating toward 150 knots. The cockpit glows an eerie Halloween green. Your captain indicates it’s time, and […]

As part of the opening session at the European Business Aviation Convention and Expo on Tuesday, the business aviation environment in Africa was brought into light. Former French minister of foreign affairs and cofounder of Doctors Without Borders Bernard Kouchner recounted several stories during his remarks. “The jeep of the sky,” was what Kouchner called […]

Drivers, motorcyclists, bikers and pedestrians craned their heads to the skies as military trainers, combat fighters, bombers and reconnaissance aircraft made their way over the city in a series of formations, commemorating the 70th anniversary of V-E Day (victory in Europe). World War II was a special era in the history of aviation, the likes […]

After my purgatory in West Chicago and three mostly great years in the Indianapolis FSDO, the FAA offered a transfer to Cincinnati. It was a bittersweet decision, and my boss, Jay Peterson, rather obliquely suggested I might want to stay put. He understood I was anxious to get back home, but he also knew the […]

Another historic airplane model has flown its final leg as the last flying Boeing 247 landed this week at King County International Airport/Boeing Field in Seattle, the same airport where it was built more than eight decades ago. The Boeing airplane will become a part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Flight. As […]

A story we posted recently about a pilot taking his dog flying with him generated a lot of discussion on our Facebook page, and a lot of our readers had their own photos and fond memories to share. As you might expect, we couldn’t get enough. Here are some of our favorite photos of readers […]

They were a big Irish family in Hamilton, Ohio. I’m not sure if Bernie or Joe was the oldest, but Art and Bill came along about 10 years later with another brother and three sisters somewhere in between. In 1929, after a neighboring farmer, “Pop” Muhlburger, taught the two oldest boys to fly in his […]

Once upon a time I went to Disney World … well, sort of. A man I knew owned a Piper Cherokee and wanted to fly to Pensacola, Florida, to see the Naval Air Museum. He asked me to go because he didn’t have an instrument rating and I guess he was a little sweet on […]

In what must have been a desperate attempt to meet gender quotas, the FAA hired me as an inspector in the Chicago O’Hare Air Carrier District Office in 1980. Six months later, somebody realized I knew absolutely nothing about jets or air carrier operations and farmed me out to the DuPage General Aviation District Office (GADOs then, […]