Pilot Proficiency

A Piper Cherokee struck a mobile home in Lake Worth, Florida, on Tuesday evening, killing the pilot and a young woman sleeping inside the trailer. Footage from nearby surveillance shows the plane in a steep bank, its wings almost vertical, before it dives into the mobile home. Flames engulfed the plane and the trailer, where […]

An airplane whose CG is significantly far behind the aft limit becomes neutrally stable or even mildly unstable. It can still be flown by a sufficiently alert pilot, but to a pilot who is unprepared for it, the experience is disorienting and can easily lead to overcontrol. Overcontrol in the nose-up direction, in turn, can […]

As a longtime reader of aviation accident stories in I Learned About Flying from That, I never thought that so soon into my aviation adventure I’d find myself telling a story of my own. All of the events that follow took place during an aviation-packed day that would begin with the eager anticipation of visiting […]

While we hear of gear up landings from time to time, a gear up takeoff is definitely an unusual incident. But here is a video that serves as proof that it does happen, too. A Mooney M20C departing from Raglan, New Zealand, dropped on its nose just as it was about to lift off a […]

Are you in the category of pilots who park the airplane, lock it up and leave as soon as you land from a flight? You may want to take some time to hang out with your aerial chariot for a while after it gets you safely on the ground. Opening up the inspection door in […]

The entire Flying team is getting ready to head for sunny Palm Springs to oversee final preparations for Flying Aviation Expo at the Palm Springs Convention Center, which kicks off on Thursday, October 15, with the Parade of Planes through the streets of downtown. Based on pre-registration numbers, it’s going to be a great show, […]

Discovering the wonders of flight can be some of the most memorable experiences, and young Léa Langumier can’t seem to get enough of it. You might remember when we featured a viral video of the four-year-old’s first aerobatic flight with her pilot father, Raphael Langumier, earlier this year. Well, not long after, Léa was already […]

Are we witnessing the dawn of a kinder, gentler Federal Aviation Administration? Saying it is seeking to challenge the safety status quo, the FAA is adopting a new “compliance philosophy” designed to cut pilots and aircraft operators a break for honest mistakes as part of what is being described as an agency-wide push to identify […]

Neuroscientists tell us it is impossible for the human brain to multitask. We might think we’re becoming more productive by splitting our attention, but in reality when we attempt to multitask we really end up doing twice as much as we should, half as well as we could. There are unavoidable negative impacts when we […]

An American Airlines copilot safely landed an Airbus A320 in Syracuse, New York, yesterday after the captain became ill and died on the scheduled flight from Phoenix to Boston. American Flight 550 left Phoenix at 11:55 p.m. local time Sunday with 147 passengers onboard and diverted mid-flight, landing shortly after 7 a.m. EDT on Monday. […]