Pilot Proficiency

A passenger was killed and the captain nearly struck by a bullet on Tuesday night as gunmen opened fire on an airliner landing at the main airport in Peshawar, Pakistan. According to news reports, a female passenger sitting next to her daughter died in the attack and two flight attendants were injured when at least […]

The more intimate your relationship is with your airplane, the better prepared you are to provide the airplane with a long, healthy life and, more importantly, you will be more acutely aware of when something is not quite right. You are much more likely to be able to accurately diagnose a problem quickly if you […]

Mira Slovak, also known as “The Poor Refugee,” passed away this week at the age of 84. While not very well known to our generation, Slovak became a legend when he won the very first National Championship Air Races’ Unlimited Category, flying an F8F Bearcat, in 1964. Slovak didn’t cross the finish line first, but […]

Need a quick pick-me-up to carry you through the rest of the work week? This video will likely do the trick. Shot by a couple of pilots flying over the Judith River in beautiful north-central Montana, the footage captures a one-of-a-kind flying experience over some of America’s most breathtaking terrain. We only wish we could […]

In 2012, USA Today reporter Thomas Frank was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He didn’t win. Maybe coming so close to claiming journalism’s top accolade and missing out ate at him. And so he set his sights on a tantalizing new subject – the miserable safety record of little airplanes – that could finally […]

When we make a turn in flight, why do we use the rudder? We all know from the books the answer is to “correct for adverse yaw” — which is just a fancy way of saying to overcome drag from the aileron. When you initiate a turn, which should you move first, the aileron with […]

A 21-year-old pilot who works for a skydiving company was forced to make a skydiving jump of his own — his first ever — to bail out of his Cessna 182 after a previous jumper damaged the aircraft in flight. Southern Illinois University student Shawn Kinmartin was flying south of St. Louis at 11,500 feet […]

Richard Rockefeller, the nephew of former vice president and New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, died on Friday morning when he crashed in his Piper Meridian in poor weather soon after takeoff from Westchester County Airport outside New York City. Rockefeller, 65, had flown his PA-46 from his home in Maine to celebrate his father David […]

Accident investigators are focusing on two perplexing clues as they try to determine what caused the deadly crash of Gulfstream IV in Bedford, Massachusetts, on May 31 after the jet failed to lift off from the runway during what should have been a routine takeoff. The first mystery concerns the GIV’s flaps. Investigators found the […]

_”The Cub is the safest airplane in the world; it can just barely kill you.” _ — Max Stanley, Northrop test pilot A friend who recently launched into an RV-8 project sent me the video of an aerobatic performance by local RV guru Jon Thocker. Jon’s routine was graceful, precise and beautifully filmed, so it […]