Pilot Proficiency

A 1950s-era vintage Spanish jet trainer crashed into a hangar and exploded in a fireball at an airshow in Spain on Sunday, killing its 35-year-old pilot. Around 3,000 spectators witnessed the crash at Cuatro Vientos Airport when the historic Hispano HA-200 Saeta went out of control and crashed, sending a fireball and thick black smoke […]

The Swiss all-electric, solar-powered Solar Impulse has completed the first leg on its 2013 Across America mission. Bertrand Piccard, Solar Impulse’s initiator and chairman, landed on Saturday at Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix, 18 hours and 18 minutes after he departed from Moffett Airfield (KNUQ) near San Francisco, California. The 650 nm flight averaged about […]

All pilots must eat. Learjet pilots on an overnight have to eat. Due to unusual circumstances, I’ve participated in a variety of eating experiences while flying trips as a backup first officer in a Lear 31A for Elite Air of St. Petersburg, Florida. I say unusual because I am not your usual first officer. My […]

Divers resumed their search for a Grumman G44 amphibian that crashed into the Hudson River Thursday evening after finding no survivors at the scene the night of the accident. The crash happened around 4:30 p.m. in Germantown, New York. Witnesses reported seeing an explosion shortly after the twin-engine amphibian plunged into the Hudson, with several […]

It seems simple enough: a small taildragger — a Stinson, it looks like — lined up for takeoff on a nice but shortish downhill sloped grass strip. Then something goes terribly wrong: The pilot actually tries to take off. The resultant takeoff is the most harrowing I’ve ever seen that doesn’t end in a flaming […]

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 C.K. Bondar, who recently flew into Witham Field Airport in Stuart, Florida in a PA-28-181. Here’s what he had to say about one of the airport’s FBOs, Stuart […]

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Learjet brand, Flexjet partnered with Jet Art’s Princess Tarinan von Anhalt to create one-of-a-kind modern art pieces at West Palm Beach Airport yesterday using the powerful jet blast from a Learjet 45XR as an $11 million dollar “paintbrush.” Von Anhalt hurled paint into the force of the Learjet’s […]

A group of Bonanza owners share the love for their airplanes at an American Bonanza Society convention. (Photo by American Bonanza Society)| Around the beginning of factory production of airplanes, which happened a mere handful of years after the dawn of powered flight, it occurred to aviators that it was in their strong interest to […]

Two Cessna 172s collided on Monday afternoon near Calabasas, California, on the west end of the San Fernando Valley near the Los Angeles metropolitan area. While receiving significant damage in the collision, one airplane landed safely on Westlake Golf Course, a few miles west of the crash site of the second airplane, which impacted a […]

A National Airlines Boeing 747-428 cargo plane carrying military vehicles crashed on departure from Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan on Monday, killing all seven occupants aboard the airplane. The crash was captured on at least two dash cams of vehicles driving on a highway near the air base. The video shows the airplane on its initial […]