Search Results for: flying warm winter

For many years airplanes have been the only transportation vehicles still allowed to use leaded fuel in the United States. Even NASCAR transitioned to unleaded gasoline for its stock car races a couple years ago in a symbolic move of going green. In aviation we have had a solid defense for leaded fuel because there […]

Airframe by Cessna. Engines from Pratt & Whitney. Avionics by Collins. In a world where we all wonder what became of the blue chip companies, these three names are still rock-solid leaders in business aviation. So it is only natural that they would team up to make the Citation XLS, the bestselling business jet for […]

You may remember last month we left off in a brand-new TBM 850 halfway between Scotland and Iceland at Flight Level 280 with both a master caution and a master warning light flashing and a horn blaring. That we were a long way from any land much less any runway required no emphasis. A fuel […]

Every spring the FAA accident records are littered with a few reports of runaway aircraft — the result of hand propping gone awry. Usually, no one is injured. But innocent aircraft parked nearby are often victimized. In some cases, the errant aircraft will actually take off and fly around until it runs out of fuel […]

Airframe icing has been a safety hazard since the first pilots flew in cold clouds, or in freezing precipitation. Can you imagine those early mail pilots trying to get across Pennsylvania in the winter with its lumpy terrain, perpetual cloud cover and freezing temperatures? With all of those leading edges, struts and flying wires to […]

Lindbergh did it alone in 33 hours, though that was eastbound. I did it 81 years later westbound, in a brand-new turboprop airplane, guided by an experienced transoceanic ferry pilot. It took four days. The experience was remarkable in very many ways; some were impressive technical aspects, others were extraordinary observations that are best categorized […]

That year winter arrived on the heels of a cold front that marked the end of an interminably long and hot Ohio Valley summer, one that lasted nearly to Thanksgiving. Arriving at the ‘drome for a flight check I got a brutal reminder that airports are the coldest places on the planet. Back to the […]

The recent episode of a Cessna 337 ditching in the North Atlantic captured the attention of a lot of pilots. The fortunate survival of the crew — hopping from ice floe to ice floe for 18 hours until rescued by a fishing boat — ought to be a conversation starter, even though most of us […]

I had no preconceived notions or expectations as I rolled into the parking lot at the northern end of Lake Washington. The Seattle sky was a typical mixture of grey confusion, the clouds in various meteorological forms. A small swath of orange glowed in the distant northwest, a feeble reminder that the earth still revolved […]

What, you may ask, is a middle altitude? A wiseacre might say that it is the airspace between low and high altitudes and he would be right. The highest level for the middle might be Flight Level 250. The aircraft certification standards change above that altitude. Or it might be Flight Level 230 where air […]