Pilot Proficiency

FAA records show that the 1996 Socata TBM 700 was registered just nine days before it left Gadsden, Alabama, on a flight to Montrose, Colorado, on Saturday. It crashed into a reservoir about 25 miles from the destination airport. The turboprop single was registered to an Alabama LLC, and made a fuel stop in Bartlesville, […]

Aviationweather.gov is getting a whole new look and feel today, but don’t worry, the National Weather Service promises that all of the content previously available on the site will still be there — just with updated page layouts and menus. The site underwent a makeover to bring its look in line with sister site weather.gov, […]

A closer examination of satellite data confirms that missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 crashed in the southern Indian Ocean, ending a baffling weeks-long mystery and focusing the search for the Boeing 777’s black boxes in the area off the southwest coast of Australia. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said at a press conference this morning […]

As an airline pilot, I generally try to stay out of the newspapers. Finding oneself on the front page of The New York Times usually means you’ve bent some metal, partied too hard on an overnight or finally lost patience with the TSA and sucker punched one of its goons while cellphone cameras rolled. And […]

Returning from a year of sequestration, the Blue Angels squadron will take to the skies at the inaugural Los Angeles County Air Show, set to take place this weekend at the General William J. Fox Airfield in the outskirts of Lancaster, California. The team of six F/A-18 Hornets will perform their nail-biting formation show, which […]

Accident investigators are reviewing amateur video that shows a Piper Aerostar twin performing extreme low-level maneuvers over a Colorado neighborhood moments before crashing. The pilot, the sole occupant in the airplane, was killed instantly when the Piper crashed in a fireball next to homes on the outskirts of Aurora. Nobody on the ground was hurt. […]

Search aircraft and ships are headed to a location in the southern Indian Ocean where Australian officials said satellite images show debris that could be from missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Officials cautioned that is unclear at this point whether two large pieces of debris belong to the Boeing 777 that disappeared on March 8 […]

It’s probably not surprising that author Ernie Gann, a former captain for my airline, is one of my heroes. His poetic words epitomized the very beginning of commercial air travel — when it was romantic to fly. Captains were given the ultimate authority over nearly every aspect of their flights. But interestingly enough, he challenged […]

Driving from Tampa, Florida, to KPBI for class at JetSuite’s Palm Beach base, Phil Smith and I are reunited for one last time. Indoc and sim partners for almost a month, we are both about to fly as first officers for the first time; each of us has been assigned to a “B” captain for […]

Two people were killed and one was critically injured on Tuesday morning when a news helicopter crashed and burned next to Seattle’s Space Needle. Two cars were destroyed in the crash as flames and plumes of black smoke poured from the burning wreckage about 50 yards from the base of the Space Needle, according to […]