Flight Planning

As 40 million Americans prepare to visit relatives and friends this Thanksgiving week, Mother Nature has decided to add a twist with a massive winter storm that is delaying airline flights and grounding many GA pilots. To help travelers keep tabs on airline flight delays, FlightAware.com has created the Misery Map, a real-time weather and […]

Sporty’s has released a new and completely revamped version of its E6B app for the iPad, iPod Touch and iPhone, including the iPhone 5. The new version includes the same features as the electronic E6B that is available from Sporty’s Pilot Shop. The app includes 22 aviation functions, conversions for 10 different parameters and some […]

Marking the sixth major software update of the year, ForeFlight has introduced some great new features to the latest version of its Mobile flight app that received rave reviews from pilots at AirVenture last week — before the update was even available. The newest version, ForeFlight Mobile 5.3, can now overlay approach plates and airport […]

At a news conference at AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, Jeppesen introduced several new aviation programs for the iPad. Responding to the popularity of Garmin’s G1000 integrated glass-panel avionics, which is now the standard package for most new training airplanes, Jeppesen has introduced a G1000 avionics training app. The G1000 avionics training covers VFR and IFR […]

I was impressed when I read of the exploits of Bill ­Harrelson, the Virginia pilot who on March 1 flew his ­Lancair IV nonstop from Guam, in the western Pacific, to Jacksonville, Florida. The hop, if you can call it that, of about 8,000 statute miles took 38 and a half hours. If that weren’t […]

I gazed at the pile of Jepp binders that were scattered across my desk: United States, Europe, Latin America, Pacific, Far East, 777 ops manual, company manual. I sighed with a wary smile. Was it possible that I would never again have to clack open metal rings and replace pages upon pages of approach plates […]

We all know the old saying: flying is hours and hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror. What rarely gets mentioned are those other times, when we pilots get that uneasy feeling. Many of you will know what I’m talking about. For instance, you’re flying above inhospitable-looking terrain or in solid IMC when […]

(March 2011) — PAYING HEED TO THE Scottish poet Robert Burns, who said: “The best laid schemes of mice and men go often askew,” I counsel those who come to me for flight training not to think in terms of “if,” but rather “when,” so that they are prepared for that moment when things go […]

(February 2011) — Joe Biden came to visit last Memorial Day weekend. I wish he had called first so I could have invited him for an airplane ride. Sunday morning, May 30, was beautiful on eastern Long Island. You could almost see Ireland, and it was as calm as a lobster on lithium. On days […]

Over the course of the 18 years that I have been writing for Flying, I have received a couple of indignant letters from pilots who for some reason thought an article I had written was directed at them personally. They firmly stated that they would never make the kind of mistake I had written about. […]