Search Results for: general aviation inc

(function(d, s, id) { if (d.getElementById(id)) return; var js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = ‘//cdn4.wibbitz.com/static.js’; d.getElementsByTagName(‘body’)[0].appendChild(js); }(document, ‘script’, ‘wibbitz-static-embed’)); We proudly present Flying Magazine’s Top 100 Warbirds, our list of the best, most influential, fastest, most powerful, most effective and most revered fighting airplanes of all time. As with any top list, there’s […]

The questions over how to replace 100LL avgas and what the impact will be on the approximately 167,000 aircraft that depend on it continue. The FAA is now in the process of reviewing nine potential replacement fuels from several companies that have submitted proposals to the government agency. The companies are Afton Chemical Company, Avgas […]

The Pilot’s Bill of Rights championed by Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe and passed into law two years ago has been so successful that a summer 2014 sequel is in the works. Inhofe’s Pilot’s Bill of Rights 2 is being crafted to address continuing “unfair practices and regulations toward the aviation industry” by the FAA. Looking […]

President Obama’s choice to head the National Transportation Safety Board is winning unanimous praise in aviation circles, and for good reason. Christopher Hart, an NTSB board member since 2009, is an active GA pilot who holds a commercial license with multi-engine and instrument ratings. He will succeed Deborah Hersman, who left the NTSB to head […]

A 91-year-old aviation enthusiast, Huntly Briggs, is changing the game when it comes to paper airplanes. Most of us know paper airplanes as blank pieces of paper that we simply fold to create a glider that we can throw in hopes of watching a graceful flight. The object is generally to create an object with […]

Conditions were about 600 overcast, visibility four miles in haze as I prepared to depart the Santa Maria Public Airport/Capt G. Allan Hancock Field (KSMX) in Santa Maria, Calif. I was flying a well-equipped Beechcraft A36 Bonanza sporting a Garmin 530/430 stack and a Honeywell KFC225 autopilot/flight director—the airplane and configuration with which I’m most familiar and current.

A close friend, pilot and former aircraft owner is fond of reminding me that general aviation “as we know it” is going away. He laments losing the GA industry as it existed in the last 20 or so years of the previous century, mainly because fewer pilots today use their airplanes for personal transportation. (Business use of GA continues, of course, with its fortunes tightly tied to the overall economy, which is another topic.)

We regularly see non-turbocharged piston singles cruising in the 4500-6500-foot range, even when wind and weather aren’t operational considerations. Meanwhile, a few thousand feet higher, the ride’s better—as is visibility—there’s better comm and navaid reception, and likely a lot less traffic. So, why do some pilots of personal airplanes prefer to cruise at lower-than-optimum altitudes? Why do others go as high as they reasonably can for the trip length? Is the extra time and fuel worth climbing a few more thousand feet?

I had my Bonanza set up perfectly for the straight-in ILS Runway 22 approach at Malabo, Equatorial Guinea (FGSL), following a short, 63-nm flight across the Bight of Biafra from Douala, Cameroon (FKKD). It was actually a rare clear day near the equator and I could easily see the nearly 10,000 foot Pico de Basile only 10 miles south of Malabo, certainly a potential terrain hazard to be managed if it had been actual instrument conditions and I had been concerned about the missed approach. That would be one of many risks to be managed in this environment.

The military scrambled a pair of F-15s on Saturday after the pilot of a small airplane strayed into the Washington, D.C., Flight Restricted Zone, prompting the evacuation of the Capitol, Library of Congress and Supreme Court for a short time. The fighters escorted the airplane to the airport in Mount Airy, North Carolina, where the […]