Pilot Proficiency

A new Mooney Acclaim Type S crashed yesterday afternoon outside a Pipkin Creek Road home in Lakeland, Florida, adjacent to the Lakeland Linder Airport where the Sun ‘n Fun airshow is underway. The airplane was engulfed in flames following the crash and is a total loss. However, multiple media reports indicate that the pilot was […]

When something unexpected happens in flight, the last thing you need is to have to search for equipment that could help ease the problem. Keeping any gear that you could potentially find a need for in flight within reach or even attached to your body could prove invaluable. Let’s just say that you are flying […]

It was a beautiful day for flying. The takeoff from Waco Regional Airport in Waco, Texas, was routine and uneventful as I turned onto a northwest heading as indicated by the GPS. I had reduced from takeoff power to about 2,450 rpm and about 24 inches of manifold pressure. As I was leaving 1,500 feet […]

Just after noon on a June day in 2012, a Pilatus PC-12 took off from Fort Pierce, in the middle of Florida’s Atlantic coast, bound for Junction City, Kansas. The pilot, his wife and their four young children were aboard, returning from a vacation in the Bahamas. Less than a minute later, the pilot engaged […]

I could feel my mind going deeper and deeper into a fog. No matter how hard I tried to focus, I couldn’t seem to make sense of the basic problems that I had been tasked with. What is the sum of 15 plus 4? The question wasn’t hard, but it took all of my brainpower […]

Investigators say the pilot of a twin-turboprop Piper Cheyenne that crashed short of the runway at Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport on Sunday reported smoke in the cockpit minutes before the airplane went down in a wooded area in a south Florida nature preserve. All four people were killed in the crash at about 4:25 p.m. […]

Invariably whenever somebody posts a fun flying video online, the Internet “sheriffs” come out in droves to inform the original poster of just how many Federal Aviation Regulations he or she has broken. Of course, the only thing that really matters is what the FAA has to say about your video. And a new national […]

The fast-moving cold front bristled against the western edges of Washington’s Cascade Mountains. Rain showers and gusty winds swirled through the valleys as thick clouds enveloped the rising terrain. Darkness had long since fallen that February night as clock hands edged past 10 p.m. Air traffic controller Jared Mike plugged his headset into the workstation […]

A student pilot who survived a helicopter crash in December has filed lawsuits claiming his instructor was using FaceTime, a popular video chat application, on his cell phone during the instructional flight in a Robinson R22. The lawsuits were filed by the student, Jonathan Desouza, and his lawyer against the flight school that operated the […]

The National Transportation Safety Board released more than 800 pages from its accident investigation docket that reveal troubling clues about what may have caused last May’s crash of a Gulfstream IV in Bedford, Massachusetts, which killed seven people on board including Philadelphia Inquirer owner Lewis Katz. The most disquieting information contained in the trove of […]