Pilot Proficiency

Teterboro is one of the busiest business aviation airports in the United States, handling 178,000 takeoffs and landings annually, many on IFR flight plans. Most runways offer a straight-in approach, except Runway 1. KTEB’s proximity to nearby Newark Liberty means the best approach available to Runway 1 is the ILS Runway 6, circle to land […]

Part of what makes Flight Chops videos so successful (and entertaining) is that Steve Thorne gets to fly the planes most of us don’t have the opportunity to fly, and he gets test gear that we don’t necessarily get to use. For his latest episode, Chops and friends tested one piece of equipment that we […]

I realized at some point during my instrument training that airplanes are a lot more like horses than they are like cars, and pilots can learn a lot by approaching their machines with this in mind. As a child I rode horses — a lot. We had four of them on our property. As a […]

The newest version of Sporty’s Learn to Fly course is now available, and it’s the biggest update ever, featuring hours of updated HD video and the ability to switch among three viewing formats (online, iPhone/iPad and Apple TV) for one price. A student’s progress as he or she takes the course automatically syncs no matter […]

At a time when we wonder if millennials have any interest in aviation, and especially if they can afford it (for more, read “On Course” from the November issue of Flying), Matt Guthmiller’s story is one every pilot can appreciate. Flying since he was 16, Guthmiller added his name to the record books when he […]

The conventional wisdom about millennials goes something like this: They would rather sit inside and play Xbox all day than go to the airport and learn to fly airplanes. Mind you, nobody ever presents any evidence to show this is in fact true, but in our gut we all kind of understand there’s at least […]

An old TWA captain once told me that the definition of a successful aviation career is when the chief pilot meets your retirement flight and wonders aloud, “Who the heck are you?” There’s some good advice buried in that witticism, and I’ve tried to live by it over the course of my career. I had […]

This normally nontowered airport was probably the busiest it had ever been. The airport needed to land an airplane about every minute and a half to accommodate the arrivals in the time available between sunrise and 10:30 a.m., when everyone wanted to be on the ground. The trick was getting everyone off the runway and […]

Mainstream media and social-network users have not been kind to the airlines over the past several months. In some cases of less than exemplary customer service, the negative publicity is well-deserved. That being said, the handful of edited YouTube snippets being broadcast on network television can be mischaracterized, overblown, distorted and taken out of context. […]

With the early morning sun just beginning to brighten the sky, my 1966 Piper Cherokee climbed from Meriden Markham Airport’s (KMMK) Runway 18. The conditions in Meriden, Connecticut, were clear, with calm winds — a perfect day for flying. Armed with a Special Flight Rules Area VFR flight plan, I turned toward my destination, Tipton […]