Pilot Proficiency

It’s one thing to tell a pilot “Avoid loss of control!” of his or her airplane in flight, but providing additional tutelage on exactly how to prevent such a dangerous situation from developing in the first place is a completely different matter. That’s because there are so many ways to lose control that you probably […]

With the weather turning nice in many parts of the country, the FAA and GA industry have partnered to launch the “Fly Safe” summer safety campaign, highlighting the dangers of aircraft loss of control and encouraging general aviation pilots to install and use angle-of-attack indicators. Loss of control, notes the FAA, is the number-one cause […]

For the past five years the members of the Victoria Flying Club in Victoria, B.C., Canada, have been using a Redbird FMX full motion flight simulator for their landplane training needs. The club recently added an option that chief pilot Graham Palmer says is the first of its kind in the world: a full motion […]

Five survivors were plucked from the waters off Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas, late last night after ditching in a Cessna 172 and clambering into a life raft as the sun was going down. The group floated in the water for three hours about nine miles southeast of Nassau before finally being located at […]

Chief pilot of Virgin Galactic, Dave Mackay, gave his first media interview regarding the tragic crash of SpaceShipTwo last October. Mackay spoke about his experience, telling the BBC he was flying WhiteKnightTwo, which carried the small space airplane to 50,000 feet during the ill-fated mission. While Mackay didn’t see the accident itself, he was above […]

Following a successful inaugural event last year, Flying Magazine is once again sponsoring and hosting the Flying Aviation Expo in Palm Springs, California, this October 15-17. Several of the activities and events featured at the show will be back bigger and better, including some new premiere sponsors — Scheyden Precision Eyewear and Aircraft Spruce. To […]

The fault may have been in their stars — it would be easy to check with the help of a good astrologer — but amateur-built and otherwise non-type-certificated aircraft hit an especially rough patch in April 2014. The run of bad luck actually began a couple of weeks earlier, on Feb. 16, when the 77-year-old […]

What’s more harrowing than a tough crosswind landing? Well, a crosswind landing at night. As we’ve seen, the Birmingham Airport in the UK provides endless challenges day and night for pilots taking off and landing at the windy airport. But as daunting as the shaky ascents and descents can be, there’s no doubt that the […]

Sonex CEO Jeremy Monnett and a company mechanic were killed on Tuesday in the crash of an experimental Sonex Sport Acro at Wittman Regional Airport in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, where the company is based. The two-seat single-engine taildragger crashed into a row of Oshkosh trucks near the east end of Runway 9 for undetermined reasons. Nobody […]

It was cold. That isn’t always a bad thing. Engines have more power; wings produce greater lift (more or less). But there was also moisture. Quite a bit of it in fact. And that is just no fun when it’s below freezing. Throw in the fact that I was at the end of a long […]