Pilots

Three-quarters of the globe behind them, Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, now had only the Pacific Ocean left to cross. They took off midmorning from Lae, Papua New Guinea, on July 1, 1937, bound for Howland Island, an 8,200-foot-long, paramecium-shaped speck halfway to Honolulu. A runway had been carved out on the uninhabited […]

Pride is hurt, though not the airplane…this time.

“Everything we do here has to meet five criteria,” Kermit says as he whisks me through a full-scale set of a B-17 bomber awaiting a pre-dawn departure for a raid over Germany. I step past a snowbank outside the wooden briefing shack, shivering in the dark and robustly air-conditioned display area as I strain to […]

Ask the average person on the street whom they would regard as the ultimate pilot, and you will typically get one of two answers: Charles Lindbergh and Chuck Yeager. The US Army Air Corps (and later US Air Force) pilot captured the world’s attention with his heroic feats, several of which advanced human in flight […]

Few things are as rewarding for pilots as having a partner who shares our passion, sense of wonder and exhilaration. I had such a person in my life before I lost her to cancer two years ago. Often when I think of Jackie, I reflect back on memorable trips we had together. But it was […]

Lexie and Emily Wilson, 25-year-old sisters from Austin, Texas, wanted to make some career changes and had their eyes on aviation. After touring ATP, they knew it was the school they wanted to go to. ATP offered the sisters a timeline that really felt attainable, and their goal of getting to the airlines would be […]

In today’s volatile aviation career environment, when the COVID-19 pandemic has upended every aspect of commercial and general aviation and crippled economies, many people in solid aviation career positions are finding themselves out of a job. And with the path forward to the next “normal” almost requiring an instrument rating to fly through cloudy skies, […]

Compare 1969, and the launch of Apollo 11 to 2020, and the successful docking of the crewed Dragon Endeavor with the International Space Station. Both milestones in the push that the United States made into space happened against similar backdrops of racial protest. The Smithsonian Institution has called upon its various member museums to delve […]

Blessed with nearly 100 pristine wilderness airstrips within easy reach of civilization, Idaho is the premier destination for recreational pilots from every corner of the planet. But the first time Galen Hanselman tried landing at one of those strips, he nearly crashed. Flying out of Hailey, Idaho, he often heard his pilot friends talk about […]

He had just a couple of straightforward passions in his life: flying—especially warbirds—and his wife, Lucille. Those who flew with and worked alongside Rudy Frasca couldn’t help but be infected by his enthusiasm for aviation, and understand his deep affection for his family. Frasca, flight simulation icon and founder of Frasca International, died on May […]