Pilot Proficiency

(January 2012) The news cycle is like a carousel whose riders are ever changing. For a brief moment in September, the Green Flight Challenge swept past: NASA handed a prize of $1.35 million to an airplane that had achieved an efficiency of 400 passenger-miles per gallon. Huh? said the world — and then along came […]

(January 2012) Some time back, Congress decided that the FAA’s goals were just downright incompatible. How could a federally mandated regulatory agency “encourage and develop civil aeronautics” while enforcing the regulations and exercising its authority to levy fines and suspend or revoke certificates? So guess which functions were eliminated? Washington also reminded the agency that […]

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 John “Randy” Olson, who recently flew one of Alexandria Aviation’s Piper Warriors and has nothing but good things to say about the experience. Alexandria Aviation (KAXN) Alexandria, Minnesota […]

(January 2012) The history of powered flight is short. So short that A.L. Ueltschi has lived during most of it. Ueltschi is, of course, the founder of FlightSafety International. The company is perhaps one of the most emblematic of the exponential growth of aviation; as airplanes became more sophisticated and pilots were asked to understand […]

I just got back from a roundtrip flight to Central Florida for a speaking engagement, and even after all these years of flying 1,000-nm trips in light airplanes, I was still surprised by how starkly different the “out” and the “back” legs were. This is one important lesson about transportation flying that no one ever […]

These days, insurance companies have become savvy about the level of pilot experience that decreases the chances of an accident. They often require a minimum number of hours in a type of airplane before you can fly it solo and still be covered. But if you want to increase safety and ensure that you know […]

_Enola Gay. FIFI. The Great Artiste. Kee Bird. The Big Stink. _ It was an airplane dubbed “Superfortress.” Yet many of the most famous Boeing B-29 bombers that plied the skies during the latter days of World War II carried strangely meek-sounding individual names. Perhaps that’s of benefit to our collective psyche since the airplanes […]

(January 2012) The question that was being debated around the halls of NBAA 2011 the other week was about as technical and geeky as it gets: When flying a very low approach, lower even than a decision height of 200 feet, where is the proper place for your “head,” that is, your eyes and your […]

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 has nothing but good things to say about Avflight at Harrisburg International Airport. Avflight (KMDT) Harrisburg, Pennsylvania “I fly for business. Avflight always treats me […]

(January 2012) Last month I reported the exciting news that the training required by the FAA SFAR issued in 2006 succeeded in turning the MU-2, an airplane that had been at the bottom of the accident statistics, into one of the safest turboprops in the air and, beyond that, into one of the safest airplanes […]