Pilot Proficiency

Once upon a time I went to Disney World … well, sort of. A man I knew owned a Piper Cherokee and wanted to fly to Pensacola, Florida, to see the Naval Air Museum. He asked me to go because he didn’t have an instrument rating and I guess he was a little sweet on […]

“The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of this accident was Scaled Composites’ failure to consider and protect against the possibility that a single human error could result in a catastrophic hazard to the SpaceShipTwo vehicle. This failure set the stage for the copilot’s premature unlocking of the feather system as a […]

Sometime late this afternoon, I’ll get an email telling me about tomorrow. I keep a close eye on my phone, as this will be my first rotation as captain. I hope I get paired with a strong first officer. Upgrading to captain has come just two years after the official start of my career as […]

Iliamna is a great fly-in fishing destination in southwestern Alaska. In early summer, however, it often has rain, with low ceilings and visibilities. The day of this flight was no exception. As we prepared for our IFR departure, the mountains all around were in the clouds. There is no radar at the airport, and missing […]

It’s easy to forget one of the reasons I became an airline pilot in this age of aviation technology that includes FMS, RVSM, ADS-B, RNAV/RNP, ACARS, VNAV and CAT III, plus the effects of 9/11, bankruptcy, retirement plan terminations, contentious contract negotiations and the normal stresses of a professional aviation career. Not that I completely […]

“This is 176, we’re coming in over Cape Cod descending, we have a magnetic chip detector light, we’d like to declare an emergency — and we’re heading for home plate.” It was August 1978. One seventy-six was a Grumman US-2B Tracker, a Navy utility plane nicknamed “Stoof” from the type designation of one common model, […]

As a relative newbie to flying in “weather,” I am impressed when I fly along VFR with more seasoned pilots in haze that would scare me if I were alone. “It’s just haze, with a good 5 miles of visibility,” I am often told. But looking straight ahead through 10 miles of mild haze is […]

Two years after the disappearance of Flight MH370, a potential clue washed ashore on a sandbar in Mozambique this weekend. Australian Minister for Infrastructure and Transport Darren Chester told parliament that, while it’s “too early to speculate the origin of the debris at this stage,” the metal chunk was found in a location that’s consistent […]

When starting a rotation as a Part 135 pilot on the Cessna CJ3, I really have no idea what’s coming up. I might spend eight days shuttling around the Northeast or I might cross the country three or four times. A recent trip touched all the bases when it comes to the fanciful and the […]

In what must have been a desperate attempt to meet gender quotas, the FAA hired me as an inspector in the Chicago O’Hare Air Carrier District Office in 1980. Six months later, somebody realized I knew absolutely nothing about jets or air carrier operations and farmed me out to the DuPage General Aviation District Office (GADOs then, […]