Pilot Proficiency

Videographer Cy Kuckenbaker recently captured one of the busiest travel days of the year in unique fashion with a time-lapse video showing a barrage of airliners descending on Lindbergh Field in Southern California. The short film condenses five hours of real time into 25 seconds, creating an airplane watcher’s delight as approximately 70 aircraft pass […]

Rare aircraft from near and far converged in South Florida this weekend for Ocean Reef‘s 18th annual celebration of all things vintage. The classic airplanes that made the trip to South Florida for the event included everything from vintage biplanes like the Grand Champion and the Boeing Stearman to exceptionally historical aircraft, such as the […]

If you’re ever piloting an airplane type that’s new to you and you’re curious whether the flight attitude you’ve chose to maintain on an instrument approach is ideal, here’s a quick and easy way to find out. Set yourself up at the power settings you’d normally use to hand-fly the approach and then engage the […]

It was big news when ForeFlight recently added native support for the X-Plane PC simulator allowing armchair pilots to use their iPads with the sim software. This was a great enhancement – unless you happened to fly with Microsoft’s Flight Simulator X. Now, a pilot with a background in software development has created a simple […]

Shopping for pilots can be tricky at best. There is so much aviation gear on the market, and, without trying things out, it’s hard to know what products work well and which ones don’t. Here is a collection of some of our favorites — gift ideas for all budgets that are sure to put a […]

More than a dozen years after the July 2000 crash of an Air France Concorde supersonic transport (SST) outside Paris, a French court will decide today whether to uphold a manslaughter conviction against Continental Airlines. The original ruling, which was appealed, held that a Continental mechanic improperly attached a metal strip to one of the […]

We’ve been hearing talk about a looming “pilot shortage” for so long that we’ve stopped believing it. But I had dinner last night with a group of regional airline pilots, all in their mid-30s and all left-seaters on CRJ 700s, who told me they’re convinced a pilot shortage is coming. They might be right this […]

Wingsuit pilot Alexander Polli says that he wants to be surrounded by people with a passion for life. For many people, his passion pushes the envelope of sanity. In this video Polli speaks about the project he came up with to slalom down a sheer cliff face thousands of feet high at 10 feet agl […]

FlyThisSim has just received the paperwork from the FAA signing off on additional capabilities for the company’s touch-screen TouchTrainer simulator. The TouchTrainer now features configurations for round-gauge and G1000 panels for Cessna 172, 182 and 206 airplanes (including the retractable gear versions). The analog version of the panel includes Garmin’s GNS430W and an STEC autopilot. […]

The introduction of GPS into airplanes, whether in a panel-mounted or portable format, has made general aviation flying more efficient and more safe particularly with the inclusion of traffic, weather and terrain information. And while playing around with cockpit gadgets is also a lot of fun, we should never forget to look outside. While you […]