Search Results for: wing aviation

As we enter the summer fun flying season, there might be a time when someone suggests you try some spur-of-the-moment formation flying. On a VFR trip, flying within loose sight range of a friend or two can be fun. But any closer than that isn’t smart without formal training and practice — for all the […]

I didn’t know Walter Kielbowicz. I know a few things about him, for which I have the internet to thank. He was born in 1917 in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He was an MP during World War II. He was married for 60 years and fathered two daughters. He worked as a lab technician in Holyoke, Massachusetts, […]

The captain of the 767 tilted an ear toward his cockpit speaker. The controller was calling their flight number. The first officer was flying the airplane. “Transglobal 63, cross two-zero miles south of XRAY intersection at flight level two-five-zero.” The captain was about to read back the clearance, but was interrupted by another airline checking […]

It was a routine flight in every way. A University of North Dakota flight instructor took off from Grand Forks, North Dakota, at 5:45 p.m. with a private pilot who was in the university’s commercial/instrument flight program, for a three-leg, cross-country night flight in a twin-engine Piper PA-44-180 Seminole. It was a clear night with […]

“No. Hell no.” is the way one skeptic describes the reaction of most general aviation stakeholders to a proposed FAA redesign of New York airspace. As currently proposed (it changes subtly from meeting to meeting), the plan calls for extending Class B airspace out another five miles and lowering the floor from 3,000 feet to […]

If business aviation has been in a spin, the latest numbers from research firm ARG/US show we’ve likely reduced power and applied opposite rudder. Flight activity in April for that segment of general aviation did decline a whopping 18.8 percent compared with the same month in 2008, but was down only 1.86 percent from March. […]

Texas Sport Cub (Photo: EAA / Jim Koepnick) Each month, Flying answers questions about the new sport pilot/light sport aircraft rule with assistance from the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA), the authority on the opportunities available within the category commonly known as “sport pilot”: Q: I weigh 330 lbs. Am I foolish to think I can […]

About 60 miles out, a surprise. Georgetown, Delaware, reports a ceiling of 200 feet and visibility of a mile. This comes to us via the automated surface observation system (ASOS) and is below minimums for all approaches to the airport. We’re already descending, talking to Washington Center, carrying my daughter, her husband and their two […]

“Fly the plane, fly the plane, fly the plane!” I remembered my instructors from years back drilling this phrase into my head during my training … and it would pay off! It was a foggy April morning in Atlanta. I had checked the weather the night before and the ceilings were forecast to be low […]

Just as gourmands judge a meal by the quality of the dessert, nonpilot passengers rate a pilot’s skills by the landing at the end of the flight. No question, based on their recent “landing” Captain Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger and First Officer Jeff Skiles, of US Airways Flight 1549, have gotten top marks for their […]