Pilot Proficiency

Jeppesen’s Aviator app takes a simple idea and expands it to airliner cockpits, where iPads and other tablet electronic flight bags have become ubiquitous. Airline pilots these days depend on their iPads to access information from several different apps during a given flight. Switching back and forth between apps can be cumbersome and involve considerable […]

The 2019 edition of Sporty’s instrument rating course is now available, and it’s a major update incorporating hours of all-new HD video content, “smart” study tools and the ability to switch among multiple viewing formats (Web, Android, iPhone/iPad and Apple TV). Best of all, the course includes all of this for one price. Price for […]

In my first column I promised unmitigated honesty, so let’s begin there. Since last writing, a buried detail from the accident has unearthed itself from my memory. The way I told it last month, once I recovered from the near stall-spin there was so little runway left, I simply had to put the airplane down […]

Do you believe your backside or your lyin’ eyes?

Someone once suggested that if you want to know how you would feel crossing an ocean in a single-engine airplane, you should just fly out to sea for a couple of hours and then turn around and come back. There’s something about being out of sight of land that, to paraphrase Samuel Johnson’s remark about […]

The past few years have been the most exciting and dynamic stretch of time for me since I started flying 20 years ago. Much of it has been driven by the changes and benefits resulting from the implementation of the FAA’s NextGen plan, as the national airspace system transitions from 1950s-era ground-based radar and VHF […]

As I glanced down the parallel taxiway of JFK’s Runway 31L, the idea that this would be the very last time began to resonate in my psyche. The thought wasn’t debilitating by any means, but the concept hadn’t really taken hold until that moment. No more 777. No more trips to Heathrow. No more Cat […]

Should pilots be napping in the cockpit? Safety experts say maybe yes, but the FAA isn’t so sure it’s a good idea. The Flight Safety Foundation has published a guide developed with an industry “fatigue countermeasures” working group that details the “best practices for implementation of a policy allowing for controlled rest (CR) on the […]

With winter nearly in full swing north of the equator, it’s only a matter of time before instrument-rated pilots will need to make decisions about how to escape from icing situations, whether that be before takeoff or while en route. Ice adds weight and acts as a lift spoiler across wings and tail surfaces. Ice […]

The old man was seduced. There is no other way to put it. He was intrigued at first, then tempted, then smitten, and finally, all in. Against all rational thought, he was totally taken by the sexy 18-year-old. That old man was me. “She” was a 2000 Beechcraft Premier 1. In these days of carefulness […]