IFR

A faulty glideslope connection fools a pilot into following the instrument’s needle almost into the ground.

Despite a falloff in world air traffic since early 2020, Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (PANC) in Alaska still represents a stopover point for thousands of airline and business-aviation flights between North America and Asia, as well as thousands of local general aviation and military airplanes. Visitors will notice that many of those local GA […]

Chicago’s Midway International Airport (KMDW) is heavily used by the airlines, business-aviation turbine fleets, and a sizable number of smaller GA transient and training aircraft, especially since the city of Chicago closed nearby Meigs Field (KCGX) some years ago. The PANGG 3 (RNAV) arrival is one of seven at KMDW, and controllers say it’s commonly […]

In May 2019, two men took off from Tipton Airport (KFME) in Fort Meade, Maryland, for a pleasure flight. They were in a Guimbal Cabri G2 helicopter, and had hoped to find and photograph a relative of the passenger who was fishing from a boat in the Chesapeake Bay. The morning was foggy; when the […]

Laypeople are both astonished at a pilot’s abilities and wholly unimpressed during the act of flight itself. They sleep like children during instrument approaches to minimums but lose their minds when they get even a taste of light turbulence in the flight levels. It seems most people don’t know what to be afraid of and […]

Weather is one of the biggest variables in general aviation flight and a contributing cause of many accidents. While there is no way for us pilots to control the weather, we can modify our flight paths to prevent unplanned encounters with Mother Nature. Fortunately, doing so has become a lot easier in the past few […]

Dr. Scott Dennstaedt says, “General aviation has been plagued with a deadly virus for many decades called VFR into IMC. Flying visual flight rules (VFR) into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) continues to be the leading cause of fatal weather-related accidents.” Dennstaedt says his new product EZWxBrief is a cure for this virus. “Many general aviation […]

If you enjoy watching airplanes, especially any of the quickly declining global fleet of jumbo jets, Muhammad Ali International—the old Standiford Field (KSDF)—in Louisville, Kentucky, is an excellent place. The home of UPS, KSDF offers the opportunity to see large Boeings—747s, 757s and 767s—as well as Airbus A300s and McDonnell Douglas MD-11s operating day and night. […]

In December 2019, a Canadian-registry Piper Aerostar 602P with three aboard left Cabo San Lucas in Baja California, Mexico, to return home to Nanaimo on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. The group stopped overnight at Chino, California, east of Los Angeles—perhaps to visit the aviation museum there—and continued the next day to Nanaimo with a […]

Sporty’s has released the next volume in its suite of flight training applications, the Instrument Rating Course for 2021. The course can be accessed through the Sporty’s hub, just like previously released courseware in the system. The Instrument Rating Course—like the Learn to Fly course that debuted last fall—offers comprehensive video-based training, a knowledge test […]