Search Results for: general aviation inc

Some 14 months ago, 20 people died when a U.S. Marines Prowler cut a ski gondola cable in a valley near Cavalese, Italy. Captain Richard Ashby, the pilot, and Captain Joseph Schwitzer, the navigator, were facing trial on criminal charges as this issue went to press. Although the easy explanation is that the jet was flying too fast and too low through the valley, the scenario includes another twist.

Air crews rely on maps given to them by the United States to plan their mission, says Frank Spinner, a civilian lawyer hired to assist Ashbys military lawyers. When you have an uncharted obstruction that goes 500 feet above ground level smack in the middle of an approved low-altitude route,…

Like it or not, some pilots hibernate during the winter. Their return to the air in spring brings numerous special hazards – to themselves and to others. Woe to the pilot who wakes the airplane from its long winters nap on the first warming day of spring with nary a thought to what may have happened to both his skills and the planes airworthiness during the cold winter months.

Piloting skills, of course, erode after a few months layoff. To a degree, deterioration of flying skills is related to experience. If youve accumulated tens of thousands of hours and have flown the same aircraft for years, then the adverse impact of a short vacation from flying will be relatively slight. On the…

Visual perception starts with a complex image analysis done by neurons in the eye. That data is sent to the brain, which interprets information from the eyes by using information gained from prior experience (and some fancy processing tricks). Unlike a photograph, where what you see is what you get, real life visual perception hinges largely on things that are inferred.

Consequently, you can be fooled fairly easily when you place yourself in environments and circumstances that violate the visual rules that you learned through prior experience. Sometimes the fooling around can be fun, as with textbook optical illusions. Other times however, vision can fool you into a tragic mistake.

A…

This letter is in response to Milovan Brenloves thought-provoking article on general aviation safety [Reality Check, June]. There is a fine line between disseminating information on the mistakes of others with the goal of improving aviation safety and keeping a pilot alive by scaring him or her out of the sky. I believe that with this article, that line may have been crossed.

Where the article failed was not in pointing out that general aviation is riskier than automobile travel – it clearly is – but rather for neglecting to point out more reasons why it is, and what can be done about it. In Avram Goldsteins book entitled Flying Out of Danger, he performs a similar comparison of aviat…

General aviation airplanes are great business tools that improve our efficiency by allowing us to do more work that is productive in the same total time. However, a self-piloted businessperson – primarily an instrument-rated private or commercial pilot who flies him/herself in a high performance single or light twin on business trips – can end up in trouble if they dont use that tool correctly.

Perhaps the most common problem experienced by the self-piloted business flier is fatigue. The flexibility of the GA airplane tempts them into scheduling themselves into situations in which they cannot get adequate rest before flying.

How About This…
Lets say you have a 10:00 a….

I enjoyed Paul Berges article on preflights [Systems Check, May]. Its good to see someone else concerned about taxiing out over the chocks, etc. Also, having recently bought a PA-12 after not flying a lot of stick controlled airplanes in recent years, the reminder about items obstructing the rear stick was timely for me.

I also often used the CIGARS check list, especially during flight reviews with pilots in their planes, but, I didnt realize the variations in meaning of the letters. I have used, Controls, Instruments, Gas, Attitude, Runup, and Safety. A pilot can elaborate to include fuel pump as well as quantity and tank selection under Gas, flap along with trim under Attitude, belts…

Safety is simple. Use the right tool, the right person and the right procedures for the job. In well-maintained certified airplanes the right tool is usually there. The pilot presumably has been trained to fly the airplane and navigate competently.

Sometimes, however, the third leg of the safety stool is missing. The right procedures for most operations and even some emergencies are specified in the aircraft manual, but sometimes pilots arent familiar with the proper procedures, or sometimes they use procedures from other aircraft or other sources that arent proper for the aircraft and environment in which theyre flying.

Failure to use the proper procedures is an important finding i…

When newly formed Tiger Aircraft announced a few years back that it was going to reintroduce the four-seat AG-5B Tiger, last produced back in 1993, it seemed like a natural. Unlike a number of more forgettable and more obscure airplanes that have been returned to production (sometimes successfully, more often not) since the bust of […]

If youre doing maintenance yourself, follow accepted maintenance procedures – and ask a mechanic for help if necessary

When used airplanes turn into vintage airplanes, theyre easier on the budget but harder to own