Pilot Proficiency

It was a little after noon on a cloudy December day when a B36TC Bonanza with five aboard climbed out of Baker City, in northeastern Oregon, bound for Butte, Montana, 234 nm away. A few minutes after takeoff the pilot called Salt Lake Center to activate his IFR flight plan. He was cleared direct to […]

Relationships are often defined by shared experiences. So was the case with Loretta and me. When the tower asked if we wanted to declare an emergency, my date’s panicked expression suggested that our future together might require more than a safe landing. The Cessna 182 ferry mission was to be routine. N15AP had just been […]

Just Aircraft cofounder Troy Woodland and a passenger were unhurt in a serious crash of Woodland’s SuperSTOL demonstrator after an apparent engine failure over hilly terrain near the company’s factory in Walhalla, South Carolina. Woodland attempted to land the airplane on a newly built residential street where homes have yet to be constructed, but the […]

A historic World War II Spitfire fighter was damaged in a crash at Biggin Hill Airport outside London this week, but its owners vowed the warbird will fly again after the pilot performed a “textbook” emergency landing. Media outlets reported that pilot Dan Griffith lost power moments after takeoff and managed to put the airplane […]

Crash investigators believe with a “high degree of certainty” that the wing part that washed up on Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean last week indeed did come from missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 — though they have stopped just short of confirming a definitive positive identification. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak announced yesterday that […]

UK’s air traffic control provider, NATS, which created the very cool and mesmerizing videos tracking flight paths in some of the busiest airspaces in Europe, has hopped across the pond to bring us another video in their series of 24-hour data visualizations. This time, NATS partnered with FlightAware to show air traffic patterns over the […]

FlightSafety International is in the process of building a new full flight simulator to train King Air 350 pilots flying behind Rockwell Collins’ new Pro Line Fusion avionics suite. The new Level D FS1000 simulator will be introduced at the FlightSafety Learning Center in Atlanta and is expected to enter service early next year. The […]

We were bumping through the clouds at Flight Level 300, unable to escape the clutches of a low, winter jet stream thanks to 167 burly souls on board and 26,000 pounds of jet-A sloshing in the tanks. Under such conditions this McDonnell Douglas finds itself just a little short of wing, and the prudent pilot […]

After just over two years of flying our Comanche, Martha and I “needed” a second engine, and more knobs, levers, switches and gauges. In short, we “needed” a Twin Comanche. But we couldn’t afford one. That’s why the “bargain” Twin Comanche in Trade-A-Plane caught our eye. We knew the airplane would be rough, but we […]

Three members of Osama bin Laden’s family were killed on Friday when the Embraer Phenom 300 twinjet they were aboard crashed on approach to Blackbushe Airport west of London. UK officials confirmed those killed in the crash were Saudi nationals visiting England on vacation, as well as their pilot. The Saudi-registered Phenom reportedly crashed into […]