Pilot Proficiency

It was an old story. A relatively inexperienced pilot practicing landings got too slow on final approach, stalled and crashed. The pilot, 56, was flying a club Cherokee 180, a type in which he had logged 13 of his 130 hours. He was making a short round-robin cross-country flight, ostensibly for practice, with landings at […]

There I was: fat, dumb and happy. My friend Tim and I had taken my 1977 Mooney 201 from Camden, South Carolina, to Myrtle Beach to get the oxygen cylinder filled. We filed IFR on the outbound leg at 7,000 feet msl and had to fly the ILS at Myrtle Beach to get through some […]

The lobby of the Hilton Hotel across from the John Wayne Airport in Orange County, California, is packed with conventioneers. They are making a joyous noise. I am looking for Phil Smith among the throng; we will be joined at the hip for the better part of a month as we progress through “Indoc” at […]

Aluminum lasts a long time. It’s why airplanes are not subject to the same planned obsolescence that allows the automotive industry to continually generate repeat customers. Though the last combat mission over Vietnam was flown almost four decades ago, the remnants of the air war are still visible in the Southeast Asian country. Blogger David […]

A U.S. Navy F/A-18E crashed about 45 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach on Wednesday during a routine training mission. The pilot ejected before the Super Hornet went down and is in critical condition after being rescued by a fishing vessel, according to a statement by the Navy. He had deployed his life raft […]

The animal world continues to inspire aircraft designers. A couple of years ago we published a story about how the fins of humpback whales are helping scientists develop new main rotor blade designs. Now a story is emerging about how a team of scientists from New York University used the motion of swimming jellyfish to […]

Here’s an inflight service that is clearly not for the pilots. A London-based gourmet catering company called AP on Air has launched a series of cocktails to quench the thirst of high fliers. And these are not any old screwdrivers or rum and cokes. With names like sora, gotham, autumn and zephyr, the cocktails, which […]

I spent some time this week with Kenny Dichter, the founder of Wheels Up, a startup private aviation company that is rolling the dice with a fleet of brand new King Air 350i turboprops. The New York-based firm has taken delivery of its first nine King Airs as part of a massive deal with Beechcraft […]

A variety of factors contributed to the tragic crash of a Twin Commander into an Arizona mountain that killed a father and his three young children just before Thanksgiving two years ago. Linking them all, however, was a culture of “complacency” that existed among the co-owners of the company that operated the airplane, according to […]

The National Transportation Safety Board’s 2014 “Most Wanted” list of transportation safety concerns includes, “General Aviation: Identify and Communicate Hazardous Weather,” and “Address Unique Characteristics of Helicopter Operations,” as two of 10 issues the Board says deserve increased focus in the coming year. In the 2014 Most Wanted list released today, the NTSB stated: “The […]