Pilot Proficiency

The National Championship Air Races, the annual pylon race outside Reno, Nevada, continues to show distress as a result of the tragic Galloping Ghost accident in 2011. The Reno Air Race Association, which organizes the daredevil show, has ousted its long-time president and CEO Mike Houghton, who has led the organization for more than 15 […]

For nervous passengers who stiffen the moment an airplane begins to move forward and do not relax until the grab-your-carry-ons chime has sounded, it must be hard to imagine that pilots could actually fall asleep while flying. No pilot would like to admit to doing so. Nevertheless, there have been instances of airline crews overshooting […]

Ever wonder how your Christmas tree made it from the farm to the store front? In the case of the trees in the videos below, the process involved some pretty intense helicopter work. In the first video, pilot Dan Clark uses a Bell 2063B JetRanger to get the job done rather swiftly — to say […]

During the holiday season, there can often be pressure to be in a place at a specific time. You may have a big family gathering planned, possibly at several distant locations within a span of a couple of days. Get-There-Itis becomes a reality. Making the choice to stay on the ground or turn around if […]

Every year, the editors at Flying get together to select a small group of new products that have had an impact on the world of aviation during the previous calendar year. The airplanes that made the cut this time around were unusual choices for us. One of them, the Citation M2, recently received certification. Cessna […]

Our county medical society was hosting a winter conference at Sun Valley, a ski resort town in Idaho. Being an avid skier and pilot, I jumped at the opportunity to scratch both itches and fly to the conference. The FBO at my field had a Seneca II available, with oxygen, boots and hot props (but […]

On the 110th anniversary of the Wright brothers’ first flight, owner-pilot John Magoffin pushed the throttle lever forward on his rare 1933 Lockheed Vega, the aircraft of choice of pioneer aviators, including Amelia Earhart (who flew one on her solo transatlantic record flight) and Wiley Post, who flew a Vega around the world twice. Magoffin’s […]

Alan and Dale Klapmeier, the brothers who co-founded Cirrus Design in the mid-1980s, are among six people who will be inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton, Ohio, next year. The other individuals honored by the Hall of Fame include Emily Warner, who flew for Frontier Airlines in the 1970s; the late […]

Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board and the FAA are combing through debris trying to find the cause of a fiery business jet crash on Tuesday night in Atlanta in which two people were killed. The Beech Premier I departed from Fulton County Airport at the western edge of the city around 7:22 p.m. […]

Flying on a gorgeous afternoon last week in the Florida Keys, I saw something that made me shake my head. From my vantage point cruising east at 1,200 feet after stopping for lunch in Key West, I spotted a tiny speck of an airplane at an altitude of maybe 50 feet buzzing cars on a […]