Pilot Proficiency

The Coast Guard has suspended its search for the pilot of a Cirrus SR22 that went down in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Virginia on Saturday after flying through Washington’s restricted airspace and causing fighter jets to scramble. A fishing vessel near the site of the crash recovered a wheel and engine cowl, […]

Couldn’t make it to AirVenture this year? No problem. Flying was on site, bringing all the breaking show news, photos and video to you. Among the highlights, AirVenture 2014 featured the first-ever appearance by the Air Force Thunderbirds, along with the ever-popular night airshows and moving tributes to EAA founder Paul Poberezny, who passed away […]

The status of the pilot who was flying an F-15C based at the Barnes Air National Guard Base in Westfield, Massachusetts, remains unknown after the airplane he was flying crashed in a heavily wooded remote area of the Shenandoah Valley in western Virginia yesterday at 9:05 a.m., the U.S. Air Force reports. The pilot, a […]

An amateur built Loehle 5151 Mustang, designed as a miniature version of the highly popular North American P-51, crashed in Chehalis, Washington, on Tuesday. The pilot, who was the only occupant of the single-seat airplane, died in the crash. The airplane had just departed from the Chehalis-Centralia airport and crashed in a parking lot. Chehalis’ […]

Jack Knight’s was not a hero’s face. Neither rugged nor square-jawed, it was, rather, overly broad in the forehead and narrow in the chin, somewhat like Fred Astaire’s or the famous face on the bridge in the Edvard Munch painting called The Scream. But heroes are as heroes do. Knight was an airmail pilot at […]

The view is from on high. It is hard to believe you are even moving. The engines are so far behind you that they produce but a whisper. Richard Rolland sits to my right in the FO’s seat, flicking a few switches and acting all the while as if I’m doing the flying. We’re in […]

If you’ve been flying for a while and have flown with a few different people you are probably well aware that, in aviation as well as in many other facets of life, there are many ways to skin a cat. And so it is in the profession of flight instructing. For example, there are different […]

A public relations war of words between UPS and the cargo airline’s pilots union has gotten both kicked off the investigation team working to determine what caused the crash of UPS Flight 1354 in Birmingham, Alabama, on Aug. 14, 2013. The National Transportation Safety Board announced yesterday it has revoked the party status of UPS […]

How my confreres come up with ideas for their columns I have no idea, but the process is probably more studied and logical than mine. This may seem oblique, but I’ve been thinking about propellers since recently deciding it was time to quit talking and take action. So I presented myself at ­”Mother’s,” a tattoo […]

As a result of the speculative theories regarding the disappearance of Malaysia Flight 370, the subject of cameras and streaming data from the cockpit has been re-energized. But why? And for what purpose? The obvious answer is to monitor cockpit activities in the event a situation arises. But what kind of situation? A terrorist event? […]