Search Results for: Lear 45

When I was a student pilot, I was lucky to have some grizzled mentors. There were a lot of do this and dont do that admonitions, a lot of tips regarding shortcuts and rules of thumb, plus some sage advice about decision-making. A lot of that advice could be broken down into the old Its better to be on the ground wishing you in the air than to be in the air wishing you were on the ground genre, but it was often accompanied by a Let me tell you what I learned the hard way kind of introduction.

On the last Saturday in January – this Saturday in fact – the Chicago chapter of the 99s holds its VFR/IFR aviation safety expo typically drawing 300 people from Northern Illinois, Southern Wisconsin, Michigan and Indiana, mostly pilots in search of a day of brush-up training. Noted aviator Amelia Earhart was the first president of […]

What a difference a letter can make. Just take the “E” model of Embraer’s successful Phenom 300. The 300 has been a popular airplane from the start. The company says that at this moment, the factory at São José dos Campos Airport in Brazil just began building the 500th copy, although the E models only […]

In the case of the departure, and from a certain perspective, I could call that report a requirement. The respective approach/center controller is required to verify your altitude anyway to make sure it is what they are seeing on their screens, just like the Tower controller is required to make sure you are squawking the right code before they switch you. As you continue your climb, and as annoying as it can be, the verification requests could continue on every new frequency, and certainly with each new facility. While your initial departure and the climb is where you will report leaving an altitude the most, what about when youre at cruise or even up in the flight levels?

In August my wife won three free tickets to an NFL pre-season game. We live a few hours away from the stadium, so we decided to fly there. Any excuse to fly, right? I got to the airport earlier in the day (about a half-hour drive from our house) to preflight, and my wife drove up with her dad just before our planned departure time. A few minutes after receiving our IFR clearance to Charlotte/Douglas International Airport-we had been airborne for about 5 minutes-my wife tapped my shoulder with the most panicked looked Id seen. She had left the tickets at home.

I was flying a 2002-model A36 Bonanza (yeah, with me its always a Bonanza) home to Wichita from Thanksgiving in Ohio with my wife and our son aboard. Somewhere over Indiana, the Bonanzas attitude indicator (AI) began to tumble. The failure announced itself slowly, but very soon the instrument was pitching up and down in very distracting oscillations. It then displayed a range of indications-from off-scale nose-up pitch excursions to slightly below 20 degrees nose-down-in a roughly two-second cycle, while indicating bank angles between wings-level and about 10 degrees left.

According to the pilot, he was delayed about 10 minutes by traffic before completing the engine run-up and takeoff roll with no anomalies noted. After the pilot lifted off and retracted the landing gear, the engine stopped producing power about 300 feet above the runway. There was no time to perform remedial actions to restore power, so the pilot lowered the landing gear and touched down on the remaining runway. The airplane went off the departure end of the runway, down an embankment and across a road before coming to rest upright 384 feet beyond the runways departure end in low brush.

GA Wins Major Victory in ATC Privatization Fight The general aviation community made its voice heard loud and clear in the offices of Congress with thousands of e-mails from members of alphabet groups like NBAA, AOPA, EAA, GAMA, NATA and others, telling elected members that slicing the ATC system away from its FAA parent was […]

There are rules about flight into known or forecast icing conditions for Part 135 and 121 operators, but there is nothing in Volume 14 of the Code of Federal Regulations (commonly called the Federal Aviation Regulations) specifically prohibiting Part 91 flight into known icing. Instead, we look to 91.9(a). This prohibits us from operating an aircraft contrary to its published operating limitations. Add a dose of careless and reckless conduct from 91.13, and you have a better picture of the regulatory background.

Air traffic control has its challenges. Thats obvious when we controllers are working heavy traffic that tests our planning, reflexes, and intestinal fortitude. However, even off position, were sometimes put on the spot about our aviation knowledge.