Pilot’s Discretion

It’s about mindset more than math.

I became a private pilot 20 years ago, not long after my 19th birthday. Like every new pilot, I couldn’t wait to take my first passenger for a ride. The day after the check ride, I called one of my best college friends and invited him to the airport for a sightseeing flight in a […]

It’s important to have one whether you’re a new pilot or an experienced one.

Did you ever fly out of Meigs Field in downtown Chicago before it closed? It’s one of those airports you will never forget—if you were lucky enough to visit before the painful closure in 2003. But ask just about any pilot today who learned to fly in the late 1990s or early 2000s, and memories […]

Single-pilot IFR is the hardest thing most people will ever do. If you’re a heart surgeon, you might disagree, but for almost everyone else, there’s nothing that compares. The combination of high stakes and an unrelenting workload makes for a unique challenge, and there’s no undo button. Instrument training should embrace that challenge, with a […]

The aviation support system in the US has grown steadily over the past 60 years, and it is the worldwide standard for its breadth of pilot services across the National Airspace System. Notably, these services are provided as a government-funded resource without additional fees as you may experience in other parts of the world. Change is afoot, […]

Here’s a situation you’ve likely experienced: You drive 45 minutes to the airport, walk out to your airplane and start unpacking your flight bag. As you go through your normal preflight routine and organize your gear in the cockpit, you experience that sinking feeling and realize you left something behind. If you had to pick […]

On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate the quality of your weather briefing before each flight? Does the wealth of information available from mobile apps and online resources give you the feeling of being more prepared today, compared to calling Flight Service 15 years ago? Or do you find it more […]

Continued VFR into IMC is the scourge of general ­aviation. Year after year, it is a leading cause of fatal accidents—almost four times deadlier than encounters with thunderstorms and icing combined. If anything, these numbers underestimate the problem, since many “­successful” VFR-into-IMC flights never show up in the National Transportation Safety Board statistics, but instead […]

Like a good marriage, an abiding love for aviation grows and changes over the years. The emotion is always there, but the reason for the initial attraction isn’t always the same reason you stay committed. I was fortunate to fall in love with aviation as a kid while riding around in the back of my […]