Pilot Proficiency

The NTSB recently released its final report on the Super Corsair crash that killed Bob Odegaard last year, and while the findings leave many questions surrounding the accident unanswered, they do provide additional details into the revered air show performer’s final flight. Odegaard was performing a practice run at Barnes County Airport in Valley City, […]

Admit it. Airline pilot or not, when you read the title of this month’s column, you smirked. It’s OK. I get it. That’s why I decided it was high time to approach the issue head on. What am I really talking about? It’s no secret that general aviation pilots, and I include the corporate world, […]

If cool videos of people flying real airplanes in amazing locales inspires you to go flying, then the video you’re about to see might have the opposite effect. It shows wingsuit thrillseeker Alexander Polli flying his… err… body at speeds that defy common or any other kind of sense through a rock arch barely bigger […]

In our FBO Spotlight series, we’re highlighting FBOs around the country that have received rave reviews from our readers. This latest Spotlight is brought to you by Jim Sankey, who recently flew into Portsmouth International Airport at Pease in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in a Piper Archer III. Here’s what he had to say about one […]

After my article on overcoming go-around hesitation was published in the November 2012 issue of Flying, I received a message from Dr. Martin Smith about a study he and his associates at Presage Group Inc. conducted in conjunction with the Flight Safety Foundation. The goal of the study was to try to determine how commercial […]

Sun ‘n Fun closed in style over the weekend with a reported 5 percent uptick in traffic compared to last year’s show, according to organizers. Reports from companies attending the show varied. While all reported a drop-off in overall foot traffic, a number of them told Flying that the quality of the folks who stopped […]

This week marks the 71st anniversary of the Doolittle Raid on Japan. Of the 80 men who took off in their B-25 bombers from an aircraft carrier far off the coast of Japan, only four now remain. Three of the four are meeting this week in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, not far from Eglin Field, […]

As summer approaches and temperatures begin to rise, it’s important to take steps to keep cool. Excessive heat can be incapacitating, and the effects might not hit you until you have already taken off. A Ryan Air pilot found this out the hard way as he passed out partway into a flight from Pisa, Italy, […]

It is often pointed out that although people commonly imagine aircraft accidents as arising from a single big cause — engine failure, thunderstorm — they very often follow a series of small ones. Any small thing slightly out of order may, under sufficiently unlucky circumstances, become the cause of an accident. It is the inherently […]

One of the biggest problems with home PC-based flight simulators is replicating the real-world panel the pilot flies. Real-world airplane panels have a wide range of available equipment, and almost never match up with the simulator program’s configuration. A lot of training time goes to waste learning the panel that’s on the computer screen, or […]