Pilot Proficiency

The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association is two for two, following the successful completion of its second regional fly-in gathering, this one in Indianapolis. The event attracted more than 2,000 attendees, there were more than 500 airplanes that flew in to Indy Regional and Indy Metro, and more than 160 volunteers helped out with the […]

A recent photo captured by NASA’s P-3 Orion shows the remains of Kee Bird, a B-29 Superfortress that crash landed on a Greenland ice sheet in February 1947 during a Cold War spy mission gone awry. The new image was taken during a flight for Operation IceBridge, a program that records changes in the Earth’s […]

After 9/11 the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency’s authority and funding saw massive expansions as its mission swelled from border security to a statutory mandate to keep a watchful eye for terrorist threats anywhere in the country. Part of that broadened authority includes the CBP’s General Aviation Pilot Certificate Inspection program, which as you […]

An AV-8B Harrier jet from the Third Marine Aircraft Wing based at the Marine Corps Air Station Yuma crashed yesterday afternoon into a neighborhood in Imperial, California. According to a press release issued by the Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, the pilot ejected safely prior to the crash and no one on the ground was […]

A 24-year-old woman was accidentally killed on Tuesday when she walked into the spinning propeller of a Twin Otter on the ramp at the Ohio skydiving business where she worked. Sarah Rhoads, a well-liked manager for Start Skydiving at Middletown Regional Airport, was pronounced dead at a local hospital after suffering severe head injuries, authorities […]

A former F-16 pilot died on Sunday when his 1993 Yak-55M crashed during an aerobatic performance at Stevens Point Air Show in Wisconsin. Video of the accident shows the airplane in a downward spiral before it crashed into a wooded area approximately 1,000 feet from the runway. Pilot Bill Cowden, 47, was pronounced dead at […]

Every airplane has a power curve. And every power curve has a backside. It’s an area of the performance envelope in which induced drag rises dramatically, necessitating considerably more power to maintain a given airspeed and altitude. Venturing into this “region of reverse command” on approach can be particularly hazardous because as you “drag it […]

When you lay your towel down on a beach mere feet from the arrival end of an active runway, do you assume any of the responsibility for your personal safety? A German sunbather is likely contemplating that very question after a Piper Archer nearly landed on top of him recently as he relaxed on an […]

Jan. 21, 2000. 5:30 a.m. I huddle over the wheel of the tug, savoring the warmth of the dashboard heater though it adds to my early-morning stupor. I’m not sure when I fell asleep last night, but it had to be mere hours before the alarm jolted my head from its resting place on my […]

Seven people in a Gulfstream IV were killed Saturday night in a fiery crash at Hanscom Field in Massachusetts, approximately 20 miles northwest of Boston. Hanscom is one of the busiest business aviation airports in the country and is a popular destination for bizjets going into Boston but wanting to avoid Logan International. The airplane […]