We Fly

Let’s get this straight from the beginning: The Van’s Aircraft RV-14A is not an off-the-shelf airplane. Every one of them out in the wild is custom-built. Even its recommended 210 hp Lycoming Thunderbolt XIO-390 engine is hand-assembled, polished and ported by a select team of Lycoming employees. And the “A” denotes a nosewheel version, with […]

The angle of attack readout on the PFD wasn’t the first thing that caught my attention. No, that would be the unending cry of the audible stall warning as we just couldn’t catch a break. We began a steady descent, nose high, and slowed somewhere below 39 knots. We were flying rather well, all things […]

Sunday mornings at the Waypoint Cafe at the Camarillo Airport (KCMA) in California are generally bustling with hungry visitors eagerly awaiting a seat while drooling over the delicious menu. But on the Sunday in early May when I met Doug King, Epic Aircraft’s CEO, outside the restaurant, it was deserted despite crystal-clear blue skies. The […]

The Brazilian OEM celebrated its golden anniversary in 2020 by giving its popular business jet some impressive enhancements.

Turning to Bart Jones, who was sitting beside me in the cockpit as we flew over the Florida coast, I told him the battery wasn’t working in my headset. The whomp that active noise reduction creates when the power’s going made for quite a distraction. After a beat, and with a nonchalant shrug, he took […]

What should an aircraft manufacturer do with a talented engineering team that just wrapped up the successful certification test program for a jet that would go on to win the Collier Trophy and Flying Innovation Award in the same year? One option would be to put them straight back to work developing the next iteration […]

I first flew a Pilatus PC-12 Model 10 back in 2008 and found it made a nice, stable instrument platform. At 270 knots, it was no jet, but a walk through that gargantuan cabin on the ground with the massive rear cargo door open made no bones about the airplane’s ability to carry tons of […]

On a beautiful spring morning in Greensboro, North Carolina, it was with great familiarity and joy that I stepped into the exquisite cabin of a deep red HondaJet with company pilot Stefan Johansson, senior manager of flight operations. As I slid into the soft leather seat on the left side of the cockpit, my first […]

This Italian piston twin makes a surprising alternative to a turboprop.

The sound of bells emanating from the cows and goats that graze in the lower parts of the picturesque valley below Mount Pilatus can’t be heard at its peak, which sits at 7,000 feet. But as I take in the view of the bright-green fields and the snowcapped Alps and breathe in the crisp high […]