I Learned About Flying From That

The passengers were all sound asleep in the back. It would be a shame to awaken them to prepare for the landing. I let them sleep until the very last moment. There had been none of the usual complaints, like “we’re too hot” or “we’re too cold.” They had no inkling of what lay ahead […]

Around 1950 the Air Force decided it needed a new trainer airplane. As you know, the Beech T-34 was the winner. My story comes from one of the airplanes that did not win. The Temco T-35 Buckaroo was a spinoff of the Globe Swift. Saudi Arabia ordered about 15 of the T-35As, armed, to be […]

Two business associates and I were on the second leg of a three-leg business trip that would carry us from Chino, California, to Las Cruces, New Mexico, to Boulder, Colorado, and then back home. The first leg was one I had made on numerous occasions because my company had several customers in the New Mexico […]

In the summer of 1967 I was a 16-year-old student pilot flying out of Cornelia Fort Airpark in Nashville, Tennessee. This historic airport had been around since 1944 and was still surrounded by farmland. I had been flying since I was 14 with the local Civil Air Patrol unit. By the time I decided to […]

Recipe for disaster: Start with two brothers old enough to know better — one a low time pilot (210 pounds), the other a student pilot (170 pounds) — squeeze them into a Cessna 150, add 3,600 feet of elevation, blend in a lot of darkness, gradually add a crosswind, and then mix with overcast sky. […]

I purchased 3723V, a 1976 Cessna 150M, to help defray the cost of acquiring my instrument rating and to build time. After earning the rating, business took me to Phoenix, and due to the desert heat and the thermals, it soon became apparent that I needed a turbocharged airplane. So I sold 23V to a […]

I adjusted the captain’s seat a final time and exhaled a hushed whistle. My eyes darted across the DC-9’s cluttered instrument panel. Endless dials and knobs were embedded in the gray metal. A seasoned DC-9 pilot would view the layout as a smile from an old friend. I felt like I was shaking hands with […]

Most lessons learned in this column arise from personal experiences in airplanes weighing less than 12,500 pounds. But every once in a while, pilots flying big airplanes weighing 870,000 pounds or more have embarrassing moments that are worth sharing too. My two first officers and I were flying a routine leg in a Boeing 747-400 […]

There I was: fat, dumb and happy. My friend Tim and I had taken my 1977 Mooney 201 from Camden, South Carolina, to Myrtle Beach to get the oxygen cylinder filled. We filed IFR on the outbound leg at 7,000 feet msl and had to fly the ILS at Myrtle Beach to get through some […]

Our county medical society was hosting a winter conference at Sun Valley, a ski resort town in Idaho. Being an avid skier and pilot, I jumped at the opportunity to scratch both itches and fly to the conference. The FBO at my field had a Seneca II available, with oxygen, boots and hot props (but […]