Search Results for: us sport aircraft inc

A 337 breaks up and rains down from 27,000 feet. Amazingly, the right seat passenger lives to tell how it happened.

The FAA has got it right this time with publication of its sport pilot and light-sport aircraft rules. These new rules finally recognize the crucial differences in the type of general aviation airplanes people want to fly, and how they want to use them. Categorizing airplanes and pilots by intended use is actually an old, […]

The wind was blowing out of the south, 23 knots gusting to 27, when the 172 touched down on Runway 14. The crosswind was about 40 degrees. A pilot on the ground, using a handheld radio, was at the approach end of the runway giving wind advisories to a group of airplanes returning from a […]

||| |—|—| | | | Pilots and controllers are doing a pretty good job of keeping airplanes apart on the runway. During the four-year period from 1997 to 2000 there were 266 million takeoff and landing operations at the country’s 459 tower-controlled airports, and only 1,369 of those operations involved a runway incursion. That means […]

I never thought I would live to see the day that all civil aviation in this country was grounded. But it happened on September 11. It was spooky as my wife, Stancie, and I walked our dogs in the early evening in the Connecticut suburbs just northeast of New York City. Normally the air is […]

No matter how many tests I’ve taken, I still get anxious the night before an exam. In school I never pulled an all-nighter, believing that it was better to get a good night’s sleep and that anything I crammed into my cranium late the night before an exam wouldn’t stay with me after I’d handed […]

In Harry Met Sally, Meg Ryan is described as “high maintenance,” meaning that satisfying her needs is never simple or straightforward; keeping her happy requires constant attention. Anyone who owns an airplane is familiar with “high maintenance.” But maintaining an airplane so it meets the FAA’s basic airworthiness requirements isn’t as much about the expense […]

The wreckage of a Grob G115D, a German-built, all-composite, aerobatic two-seat trainer, was spread out over an area nearly half a mile long and 400 feet wide-this despite the fact the airplane was sighted shortly before the accident by a witness on the ground who estimated its height, in level flight, as only 500 feet. […]

||| |—|—| | | | At first glance, I don’t even recognize him. Nine years ago, Hank Potter was a vibrant, jolly soul, full of laughter, fire and stories of being Jimmy Doolittle’s navigator on the famous B-25 raid of Tokyo in 1942. Today, he and the 11 other “Doolittle Raiders” who were able to […]

I’m sick of the term “pilot error.” A true pilot error is a rare event. But what is so often labeled a pilot error is actually a pilot decision that didn’t result in the outcome expected by the pilot, the regulators or the public. Real pilot errors can only occur in transport-category airplanes that are […]