March 2021

The bitter cold of a February day in Minnesota in 1999 etched itself in my memory like frost on the windshield of an old Subaru hatchback. As an assistant editor in Jeppesen’s aviation-courseware department, I’d been thinking through the mechanics of flight training every day, working to translate abstract concepts into print and onto the […]

In the early 1960s, general aviation was experiencing tremendous growth, and Beechcraft wanted a bigger slice of the pie. The competition’s ever-expanding product offerings were not going unnoticed, and Beechcraft decided to expand into new market segments. It developed a new, lower-cost training-and-touring airplane that provided stable comfort for long trips, the sturdiness necessary for […]

As time goes on, most memories of the past take on a glow that wasn’t experienced in real time. A flight full of frustrations becomes a triumph of perseverance and skill when viewed in hindsight. I’m beginning to think that my early flight training is so sepia-colored by now that I have a hard time […]

Finding an alternative term for this imprecise aerodynamic one.

A certain amount of an airline pilot’s life is given over to marking time on and around airports, and that is doubly true of the junior captain on reserve. I am currently ensconced in the midcentury-modern environs of the TWA Hotel, built around Eero Saarinen’s soaring TWA Flight Center at John F. Kennedy International Airport. […]

I caught the coronavirus this past October on a commercial flight returning home from Denver. My aisle seat was toward the back of the sold-out flight with an airline that refused to keep middle seats open. By hour two of the flight, there was a line for the bathroom. All those people standing over me, […]

When you can say, “Been there, done that!”

In 1948, living in New Jersey, I wanted very much to get into flying. My inquiries led me to Secaucus (now a metropolis in its own right, 10 minutes from New York City), where I found the Dawn Patrol seaplane base located on the Hackensack River. The owner-operator was a veteran Navy pilot, who just a […]

Whatever may be said about the FAA, it produces some useful publications. One of them is Advisory Circular 90-109A, Transition to Unfamiliar Aircraft. Not to be confused with its sister publication, AC 90-89, Amateur-Built Aircraft and Ultralight Flight Testing Handbook, AC 90-109A is directed at pilots beginning to fly an airplane of a type with […]