Training

A pilot with a shocking disregard for personal safety comes to his inevitable demise.

The first day at most any new job can be a little stressful. But when you find yourself sitting in the right seat of a 65,000-pound airplane like Bombardier’s Q400 with a training captain in the left seat and a load of real passengers in back, a person’s blood can really start pumping. That was […]

Like many aviation enthusiasts, my introduction to general aviation and piston airplanes was Flying magazine. As a kid in the 1990s, I always looked forward to heading to the barbershop with my dad where I could read the latest copy of Flying while waiting my turn for a haircut. I hoped to see a full […]

The FAA has released the new Airmen Certification Standards (ACS) for the airline transport pilot (ATP) rating, effective on June 28, 2019. The effort brings together the previously used practical test standards with additional requirements for the certificate, updates to the knowledge exam, and notes formerly distributed across a variety of source materials. As with […]

In 2009, Colgan Air Flight 3407 crashed in the Buffalo, New York, metropolitan area, killing all 49 passengers and crewmembers on board and one person inside the house into which the Bombardier Dash-8 Q400 crashed. The extensive post-crash investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board found that the pilots were completely at fault. The captain […]

Pete Daniels flies Boeing 787s for one of the world’s largest airlines. He makes $380,000 a year and works an average of nine days per month. He has been flying commercially for more than 30 years. He is one of scores of airline pilots who will reach the FAA’s mandatory retirement age, 65, within the […]

The last time we spoke with Kevin Ardaugh in October 2018, he was about to begin initial first officer training with Envoy Air, American Airlines largest regional carrier. Before his arrival in Dallas to begin two months of intensive classroom and simulator training, Ardaugh completed the required ATP-CTP certification program that prepared him for the […]

My interest in flying began years before my first lesson. In one of my early books, The Joy of Flying, I detailed the hours spent as a kid watching airplanes at Chicago Midway Airport (MDW), dropping nickels in the coin-operated binoculars atop the terminal’s now-removed observation deck. “Those great silver machines would gather speed and […]

With the growing pilot shortage looming as major airlines face the retirement of thousands of pilots each year, new flight training academies are being introduced to meet the needs. Based at the Zamperini Field Airport in Torrance, California, the Sling Pilot Academy is an affordable solution for pilot candidates ready to earn the required ratings […]

Tactical Air Support, Inc, has completed a first on a Northrop F-5 equipped with Garmin‘s G3000 integrated avionics system. The supersonic airplane will soon be used by the U.S. Navy for air-to-air combat training, close-air support training, tactics development and evaluation support, Garmin said. “The maiden flight of the G3000-equipped F-5 is a significant achievement […]