Pilot Proficiency

A husband and wife were killed along with their teenage son in the crash of a Beechcraft Bonanza in the wee hours of Monday morning. According to news reports, the family left Tradewind Airport in Amarillo, Texas, around 2:24 p.m., stopped in Lubbock and continued on to an airport near Dallas. The Bonanza stopped in […]

I bought a Cessna 340 several years ago for business and personal use. It was my first pressurized aircraft, so my insurance carrier was quick to point out that despite hundreds of hours of multiengine time, I needed not only a high-altitude endorsement but also formal schooling on the aircraft before it would cover me […]

Garmin today introduced an interactive web-based pilot training course for the G5000 integrated flight deck, with self-paced lessons that are designed to make learning to use the high-end bizjet cockpit fast and easy. The G5000 eLearning program takes users through three training modes, including initial demonstrations, guided interaction and solo manipulation. After each section, the […]

The son of U.S. Senator James Inhofe was killed over the weekend in the crash of a Mitsubishi MU-2B in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Perry Inhofe, 52, an orthopedic surgeon, crashed about five miles short of Tulsa International Airport after reportedly losing power in one engine. He had taken of from Salina, Kansas, on Sunday before experiencing […]

The only good news about controlled flight into terrain accidents is that there’s usually no suffering. When an airplane travelling in excess of 100 knots hits an immovable object, the lights, to paraphrase Tony Soprano, simply go out. The fact that for practitioners of personal flying CFIT is still a major cause of accidents should […]

The long-awaited response to training shortcomings that surfaced after** the crash of Colgan Air Flight 3407** in Buffalo, New York, in February 2009 became official with the FAA’s adoption of new training requirements for all U.S. airline pilots on Tuesday. The new rules put a greater emphasis on recovery from stalls and upsets during recurrent […]

Yves Rossy, widely known as Jetman, recently visited Asia for the first time, donning his black Carbon-kevlar wing equipped with four mini-jets. A video produced by Rossy’s sponsor Breitling provides multiple perspectives of the flight and gives a pretty good idea of what Jetman’s unique experience, likely the closest replication of flying like a bird […]

The FAA’s major overhaul of training rules for airline pilots, formally adopted with a new final rule on Tuesday, came as a long-overdue reaction to the deadly Colgan Air Dash-8 Q400 crash in Buffalo, New York, almost five years ago. Earlier changes, also prompted by the Colgan disaster, have altered flight and duty time regulations […]

The stunning video of a collision between a pair of Cessna jump planes over Superior, Wisconsin, a few days ago serves as a vivid reminder to always be vigilant for traffic whenever we go flying. For some reason new pilots seem to think that a midair collision is most likely to occur in a head-on […]

It looks like something out of a movie as dramatic video captures the moment when two airplanes packed with skydivers collide in a fireball over Superior, Wisconsin. It happened this past weekend as a Cessna 185 and 182 prepared for a synchronized parachute jump. Immediately after the collision, the 182’s wing ripped away and it […]