Pilot Proficiency

We all strive for landings that are silky smooth, where the wheels of the airplane appear to kiss the ground before they slowly roll to a stop. But in addition to making a soft touchdown a priority, you should have an area on the runway in mind as the touchdown zone. If you are not […]

“Cessna 53223 cleared to Runway 18 via Charlie taxiway, Pasquale 3 departure, squawk bingo.” That’s a typical controller clearance for my friend Charlie Peck. Charlie is retired from IBM and flies his Cessna 172 nearly every good weather day. He keeps it at the Portland International Jetport in Portland, Maine. The Auburn-Lewiston airport is his […]

Investigators say part of a wing that washed up on Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean came from a Boeing 777, making it appear likely that searchers have gotten their first big break in the search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370. French investigators will check a number found on the wing part, thought to […]

The National Transportation Safety Board has concluded its investigation into the fatal accident involving Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo. The space ship disintegrated during a test flight on October 31, 2014, resulting in the death of copilot Michael Alsbury. The NTSB concluded that Scaled Composites, the contractor for the program, failed to “consider and protect against the […]

We have witnessed some pretty challenging crosswind landings in the U.K. recently, but this might be a landing to top even the most hair-raising descents. Last weekend a KLM Boeing 777 was captured on video — that has since gone viral — while making its way into Amsterdam’s Schipol Airport during what is being called […]

It was a Cessna 340A model and I was the PIC. A sleek, powerful and very cool looking twin-engine airplane, the 340A is powered by two Continental 310-­horsepower engines. Regarded as a “pilot’s airplane,” it has good performance characteristics (airspeed and rate of climb) as reflected by a power loading of 10.48 pounds per horsepower, […]

A Mooney M20J with two aboard, flown by a 300-hour private pilot, began its takeoff roll on Runway 19 at Kansas City Charles B. Wheeler Downtown Airport (MKC) at intersection Kilo, with 5,313 feet of runway remaining. The pilot retracted the landing gear immediately after liftoff and began a climb, whereupon the engine lost power. […]

We all know that we use elevator trim to reduce pressures on the yoke in flight and thereby make our airplanes easier to handle. You might reason that during an aborted landing you can leave the trim wheel alone if, say, you’re already trimmed for an approach at 70 knots and want to execute a […]

With Oshkosh behind us momentum is growing for the next major show on the aviation calendar, Flying Aviation Expo in Palm Springs, California, October 15-17. The expo at the Palm Springs Convention Center is slated to feature more than 300 brands, 75 aircraft and 50 educational seminars and tech talks. A major draw again this […]

A Piper Malibu with five aboard crashed next to the runway at Wittman Regional Airport at around 8 o’clock local time this morning, sending up a plume of black smoke and closing the airspace over Oshkosh for about three hours. Four of those on board were able to get out of the airplane on their […]