Search Results for: maintaining your airplane

The idea that the flight-control computers in a modern fly-by-wire airplane are in charge all of the time still sparks debate among pilots more than 25 years after the technology became the de facto standard in Airbus airliners. The very notion that the computers can ignore the pilot’s inputs if they so choose but the […]

The primary flight training experience doesn’t adequately prepare most students for the real world of getting from Point A to Point B. Conventional wisdom, often conferred upon us during that primary training phase, teaches us to make an either/or decision about launching on a proposed flight. Unfortunately, the “go/no-go” decision is more complex than that, and the question must be answered using risk management techniques. The answers will be different for departures, while en route and when conducting an approach to the destination.

Lancair has introduced a new option for the Evolution turboprop kit airplane called “rough service landing gear,” or RSLG for short. The new gear allows pilots to land the four-seat composite airplane at airports with unpaved runways without fear of damaging the gear. The new landing gear option has wide 12-ply Goodyear tires, which are […]

There’s quite the debate raging at the moment about whether it’s OK to bank steeply in the traffic pattern or, for safety reasons, if we should limit the steepness of turns when we’re low and slow. In a recent blog post over at AirFacts.com, former Flying editor Richard Collins had this to say: “The pilot […]

Each year, some number of pilots come to grief because they can’t handle the demands of instrument flight beyond straight-and-level. The AOPA Air Safety Institute’s 2011 Joseph T. Nall Report, which took a close look at general aviation accidents in 2009, found 22 accidents that year in which a non-commercial fixed-wing aircraft was involved in a weather-related accident with an instrument-rated pilot aboard. Of them, 16 involved fatalities. We can do better.

There’s usually not much time to react before a bird strike, as was vividly demonstrated in the dramatic video of a bird crashing the through the windshield of a Piper Saratoga last week. But the pilot in this incident reacted just as all pilots should, by maintaining control of the airplane, assessing the damage and […]

It was an old story. A relatively inexperienced pilot practicing landings got too slow on final approach, stalled and crashed. The pilot, 56, was flying a club Cherokee 180, a type in which he had logged 13 of his 130 hours. He was making a short round-robin cross-country flight, ostensibly for practice, with landings at […]

Aviation headsets have come a long way since the early days, when aviators were forced to suffer hearing loss as they accrued hours upon hours in the cockpit amid the continuous thrum of roaring engines. Any new headset you buy today will likely provide decent noise cancellation, new levels of comfort and, in many cases, […]

Many of the aviation accidents I have written about fall into the “What were they thinking?” category. This would include a noninstrument-rated pilot who takes off into weather that is so bad even the birds are walking; the pilot who continues into ominous weather; and the pilot who tries to take off on a short, […]

Especially when looking at recent accidents involving scheduled airliners, it occurs that some people are still having problems with their landings. Yes, they can be difficult to master, especially when crosswinds or other factors complicate things and distract us. But this shouldn’t be so hard.