VFR

Three men chartered a Beechcraft Bonanza for a late-night flight between Mason City (KMCW), Iowa, and Fargo (KFAR), North Dakota, about 200 nautical miles. The 21-year-old charter pilot’s initial review of the forecast that chilly February evening called for VFR weather with bases along the route at 5,000 feet and visibility of 10 miles. The only […]

Inadvertent VFR flight into IMC weather and the resulting fatal accidents are not simply a problem for aircraft pilots, but also for those flying helicopters. In a news release, the US Helicopter Safety Team (USHST) said, “Between 2000 to 2019 in the US, there were 130 fatal accidents directly linked to the issue of spatial […]

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 […]

It’s a change that has been a long time in coming, and thanks to the proliferation of flight-planning apps it won’t have much of a practical impact, but the FAA confirms that starting at the end of next month pilots must file IFR flight plans using the international ICAO format. The new format appears on […]

Cirrus SR22T Xenia, Ohio / Injuries: 1 Fatal The airline transport pilot was repositioning the airplane to its home base after maintenance was completed at a repair station. The pilot filed an instrument flight rules (IFR) flight plan with a cruise altitude of 9,000 feet mean sea level (msl). The en route portion of the […]

When the airplane entered the clouds, there was no turning back.

Standing on the ramp, glancing at Runway 17/35 at North Houston Airport (9X1), I took a deep breath as I ticked off items on the preflight checklist for N9271U, the 1976 Cessna 150M that had been my primary trainer so far. The brutal heat and humidity of the Houston-area summer had not yet set in, […]

In August of last year, a 125-hour pilot rented a Piper Arrow in Palm Beach, Florida. The rental agreement the pilot signed included a proviso that “there are not to be any night flights to or from the Bahamas or Florida Keys before sunrise or after sunset.” Notwithstanding the advice of one’s parents, one may […]

One of the biggest pleasures of flying airplanes is the freedom it provides. It is not only the ability to go virtually anywhere at any time that excites, but it’s also the ability to explore things you have never seen before from a bird’s-eye view. Part of the joy of flight is discovering some intriguing […]

“It’s that lake right … there,” he said. When he removed his finger from the chart, all I could see was a mass of hundreds of lakes. It was to be our briefing for the flying adventure of a lifetime, but it was occurring in a restaurant bar, and it was clear that by the […]