Pilot Proficiency

The Experimental Aircraft Association has added three new members to its board of directors, members who add a broad base of experience to the organization. “Each of these three EAA members has a diverse aviation background and, more importantly, a longtime connection with our organization in multiple areas,” said EAA’s chairman of the board, Jack […]

They tell us that weather forecasting is seeing dramatic improvements thanks to new supercomputers capable of making hundreds of trillions of calculations per second. The latest computers in the arsenal of the National Weather Service are now more than twice as fast as they were just a few years ago, enabling far more accurate forecasts […]

I once watched a pilot perform a quickie preflight inspection of a Skyhawk at a flight school and then hop in the airplane and try to taxi out — with the tail still tied down. The red-faced pilot shut down and untied the rope as those of us on the ramp offered words of encouragement. […]

The FAA’s insistence on charging airshows for ATC services has caused the organizers at the Copperstate Fly-In, set to take place October 24-26 in Casa Grande, Arizona, to make a tough decision. The airplanes flying in for the show will have to fend for themselves. With approximately 500 aircraft attending the three-day show, this could […]

NTSB investigators say the crash of an Aeronca Champ at Taunton Municipal Airport in Massachusetts over the weekend may have been caused by the pilot’s failure to remove the rudder gust lock before trying to take off. The 1946 Aeronca 7AC reached an altitude of around 50 to 100 feet seconds after taking off on […]

It is not often that I am able to accept an invitation from a reader, but when 27-year-old First Officer Will Romualdo offered me a jumpseat view with Avianca Brazil, I could not refuse. For the last two months, I had been flying the daytime trip to São Paulo. The layover would afford me the […]

One of the great heroes of general aviation, Paul Poberezny, died today at the age of 91. Poberezny inspired thousands of people to build and fly their own airplanes by sharing his own experience as a homebuilder. He founded the Experimental Aircraft Association in 1953, where he served as president until 1989 when his son, […]

Our recently launched gallery Flying Magazine’s “51 Heroes of Aviation” has been a runaway success, but it has not been without controversy. A number of readers have weighed in that we had left off their choice of most inspirational aviation figure — we can’t name names for fear of spoiling the gallery for those of […]

Last Sunday morning Scouts of Troop 150 from West Salem, Oregon, were breaking camp along the shore of Marion Lake in Oregon’s Willamette National Forest when they spotted a Cessna 172B that was clearly in trouble. Their leader, Matt Matthews, said that as the Skyhawk cleared a ridge and settled toward the surface of the […]

An Ohio couple that was visiting family in Kansas City died this week shortly after departing the Charles B. Wheeler Downtown Airport near downtown Kansas City, Missouri, in their single-engine Mooney. Lynn Lundsford from the FAA said the pilot had reported “an undisclosed problem” after lifting off and had been “cleared by the controllers to […]