Search Results for: general aviation inc

Each flight involves assessing risk and making judgment calls. How does your decision-making ability stack up against other pilots?

We constantly assess the risks of our everyday activities. When climbing out of the shower, we decide whether to step on wet tile or a dry bath mat. When approaching an intersection in a car, we may choose to accelerate when the light turns yellow. About to take off again after a quick fuel stop, we might conduct a cursory preflight inspection, instead of something more detailed.

In all of lifes activities-major and minor-were constantly performing risk-based calculations. Most of them-especially those not involving an aircraft-we perform every day.

When it comes to aviation, other decisions can involve using a set of skills and knowledge we may not have exercised frequently.

Just…

Even in the worst of times, the men and women working the scopes and the frequencies at your friendly neighborhood ATC facility usually refrained from allowing politics or personal opinions from interfering with their official duties. This was true following the August 1981 PATCO strike, during peak airline delays and congestion in 2000 and 2001 and in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks. In fact, late 2001 saw unprecedented cooperation between controllers and operators alike as we all struggled with airspace requirements and traffic levels that changed on a daily basis. Thats the way it should be: professionals working together to get the job done as efficiently and as saf…

The FARs set minimum standards everybody is free to exceed. But what would they look like if aviation insurance companies wrote them?

Directional and lateral stability help make an airplane a good IFR platform. Heres why along with some tips on how to measure it.

On September 1, the FAAs new rules implementing the Sport pilot certificate and Light Sport aircraft category (LSA) went into effect. This long-awaited set of regulatory changes is designed to make general aviations lower end more affordable and accessible by relaxing rules on pilot training and aircraft certification in exchange for certain specified operational limits. It represents the culmination of many years of work by industry and the FAA, especially the Experimental Aircraft Association and the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Asssociation.

Given the current regulatory and political environment, its a miracle the new rules ever saw the light of day, much less made it all the way thr…

TFRs are not part of your Garmin 430/530 data base. But they can be. Heres how to enter them.

Right-Of-Way?
Your July 2004 article, Five Pattern Sins, includes the statement, The classic conflict is the straight-in approach that T-Bones an airplane on base leg which, technically, has the right of way. I dont think the FARs agree.

While the lower aircraft is usually the one with the right-of-way, an aircraft on final approach has the right-of-way over all other aircraft in flight. This means downwind, base and anywhere other than on final.

Final approach is not defined in the regulations; the AIM attempts to define as the leg of the pattern between base and the runway along the runway centerline, but its not a comonly accepted definition. The Pilot/Controll…

With temporary flight restrictions popping up like summer thunderstorms, the chances of inadvertently straying into one and being intercepted are greater than ever. Heres what you need to know, just in case.

Can one man’s love affair with flying safely lead him from a Skylane to the jet lane? Richard Collins evaluates one pilot’s flying. Don Stephens, 67, is a (retiring), as he puts it, builder/developer. He has been flying out of the Lakeland, Florida, airport since he started 37 years ago and has owned a Cessna […]