Search Results for: wright

Some intriguing names are on the short list for the 2013 Robert J. Collier Trophy after the National Aeronautic Association this week announced a field of nine contenders for the coveted prize. The nominees include Pratt & Whitney’s PurePower geared turbofan engine, the P-8A Poseidon airplane in development by Boeing for the U.S. Navy, the […]

The volunteers in Wichita, Kansas, have been hard at work restoring Doc, a B-29 Superfortress, since the project resumed nearly one year ago. “We have made significant progress recently hanging the first engine on the airplane,” said Jeff Turner, chairman of the board of Doc’s Friends, the non-profit organization set up to restore the Superfortress. […]

On the 110th anniversary of the Wright brothers’ first flight, owner-pilot John Magoffin pushed the throttle lever forward on his rare 1933 Lockheed Vega, the aircraft of choice of pioneer aviators, including Amelia Earhart (who flew one on her solo transatlantic record flight) and Wiley Post, who flew a Vega around the world twice. Magoffin’s […]

Alan and Dale Klapmeier, the brothers who co-founded Cirrus Design in the mid-1980s, are among six people who will be inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton, Ohio, next year. The other individuals honored by the Hall of Fame include Emily Warner, who flew for Frontier Airlines in the 1970s; the late […]

In the first two parts of this series (Aviation Safety, September 2013 and November 2013), I related how I used practical risk management techniques to meet the challenges of using my Beech Bonanza on a typical (for me) multi-stop, multi-week business trip that took place in June 2013. Having been trained in an era before risk management was emphasized (which is still the case, although change is coming), I now recognize I was fortunate to have successfully addressed these hazards without incident. I’d like to say it was my superior piloting skill, but I’m afraid that chance also played a big role. I emphasize this background because, like much of the present general aviation community, I was trained in another era.

I had a birthday recently, and somebody gave me a book called The World’s Worst Aircraft. There are, it turns out, at least three books with that name, though you would suppose that one, or possibly even none, would have been enough. The project of identifying a distinct group of “worst” aircraft labors under the […]

Flying Magazine proudly introduces Top 100 Airplanes: Platinum Edition, which celebrates our Flying book, entitled Flight: 100 Greatest Aircraft. In creating the book, we decided to include some airplanes that should not have been left off the original Top 100 Airplanes list; the hard part was kicking out 20 great airplanes to make way for […]

Here are some of the distinctive airplanes that made Flying’s Top 100. For the full list, see the gallery at the bottom of the page. Flying Magazine is proud to introduce Flying‘s Top 100 Airplanes, a web-based compendium that names the 100 best, most significant and most compelling aircraft designs of all time. The list […]

Actor Harrison Ford, an enthusiastic pilot and longtime advocate for general aviation, will receive this year’s Al Ueltschi Humanitarian Award at the opening general session of NBAA’s Business Aviation Convention & Exhibition in Las Vegas. An outspoken champion for general aviation, Ford has testified before Congress and flown humanitarian aid missions in the aircraft he […]

A two-man team from Oklahoma City was in town last month with the “live” portion of the FAA’s designated pilot examiner renewal seminar. Half of the mandatory training happens online, but we still get eight hours in one of those hotel meeting rooms; if the air conditioning is cold enough and the coffee strong and […]