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A major restoration project is underway of one of the most famous B-17s, the Memphis Belle, at the National Museum of the United States Air Force at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. This Flying Fortress, which completed 25 missions over Europe before returning to the United States, was made famous by the […]

I have before me a bound volume containing a year’s worth of Flying, a gift from an old friend and collaborator, pilot and photographer Baron Wolman, who picked it up at a swap meet for $4. The year, 1916, will surprise anyone who knows that our esteemed publication first appeared, under the name of Popular […]

Take an engine from a 1970s Ford, Toyota or Chevy and put it next to one built today, and the differences are easy to spot. Dig down into the performance and economy figures, and there’s no comparison between the 30-plus-year-old technology and today’s — the newer engines are better in almost every way imaginable, with […]

Failure of an airplane’s single engine shortly after takeoff is an event all pilots dread. When it happens, we’re low and slow. We lack the potential energy of speed and altitude, have little time to respond and few options. When such a failure happens, it’s natural—in some ways—for a pilot to want to be back on the runway he or she just used. It’s right there—behind us—and seemingly offers several solutions to our problems. One thing the runway has going for it is, well, it’s a runway. We know it’s a perfectly good runway because we just used it. Another attraction is resources: There’s usually a maintenance facility or at least a mechanic who can set things right. If only we can make it back to the runway we just departed, this pesky engine failure will be okay.

Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner has won the 2011 Robert J. Collier Trophy, one of the aerospace industry’s most prestigious annual awards, by beating out a slate of other noteworthy finalists that included the Lockheed C-5M Super Galaxy, the Gamera human-powered helicopter, and Pipistrel’s Taurus G4 electric-powered airplane. “We were very pleased with this year’s slate of […]

After a decade-long hiatus, Santa Monica Airport’s Museum of Flying, which was originally founded in 1974, opened its doors last weekend. Located on the south side of the runway adjacent to a large DC-3 monument maintained by the City of Santa Monica, the exhibit area houses a theater, several interactive displays and about two-dozen airplanes […]

(March 2012) Weighing five pounds fewer than I had three days before we began training in the steamy heat of south Florida, I finally breathed a huge sigh of relief. Bill Conrad had just told me I’d passed the type rating and multi-ATP check ride in the Lockheed 18 Lodestar. As we took the runway […]

Online flight tracking is a great resource for travelers and flight instructors alike. Websites such as FlightAware and flightwise are frequently used by friends and loved ones to watch the progress of airplanes enroute to their destinations. And if you don’t wish to actively track the flight, you can set up alerts that update you […]

The NTSB (or FAA when delegated by NTSB) investigates fatal accidents and the Board issues reports on the probable cause of the accident. The reports also list contributing factors to the accident. Typically, the final reports are peppered with words such as loss of control, controlled flight into terrain (CFIT) and other language describing the final event in the accident sequence and attributing it to one or more other events. But rarely does the report explain the “why” of the accident or the “how” of the pilot’s or other participants’ actions relating to the “why.” For example, in a loss-of-control accident, why did the pilot lose control of the aircraft and how did he or she place themselves in that predicament?

Utah Valley University recently released a brief video highlighting major milestones in aviation history in a video animated in 3D. While it’s impossible to include all major historical events in 3:35 minutes, the video does a good job of including some of the most significant achievements, from Leonardo Da Vinci’s early drawings to the first […]