Search Results for: vfr

Military Airspace Revised In response to a recent Question of the Week (QOTW, Mar. 3): “Should the military be allowed to take over any more airspace without giving up an equivalent amount? What’s fair when it comes to MOAs?” As a past member of an airspace-design team at Minneapolis Center (ZMP) I have experienced many […]

FSS Privatization FAA mismanagement and union “whining” put the final coffin nails in a government-run FSS program (NewsWire, Feb. 7). I am pleased to see that the FSS Union/Harris Corp. proposal was not accepted. Harris was the main contractor in OASIS (the government replacement for Model 1). “New blood” is needed and hopefully Lockheed Martin […]

There’s no end of innovation in the world, and here are a few interesting gadgets for aviators that we’ve run across lately. The Flightcell unit, made in New Zealand, allows pilots to use a cellphone or satphone through their headset, while remaining connected to the radios — perfectly legal down under, but in the U.S., […]

Overheard last April near Miami, Florida, just as Sun n’ Fun was kicking in… Pilot: …request VFR flight following to Lakeland. ATC: N123, unable at this time… Pilot: Roger, unable. Any idea when can I expect it? ATC: Try again … this time next week.

_______COLUMNS Say Again? #46: When Things Go WrongTo get your IFR clearance at a non-towered field, you could call Flight Service or the local Center RCO, but you know you’re gonna get a delay waiting for some arrival to cancel IFR. Just launch VFR and pick up your IFR clearance in the air, right? AVweb’s […]

According to the TSB, the string of errors began before Flight 183 left Toronto on its daily nonstop flight to Kelowna, a city of about 100,000 people 200 miles east of Vancouver. An Air Canada dispatcher, aware of a major forest fire burning near Kelowna, called Kelowna Tower to ask if the airport was even […]

I spend an awful lot of time trying to explain how the system is supposed to work. Those explanations are often at odds with what people have experienced first-hand. This leaves a lot of people confused. It just leaves me frustrated.But no matter how conscientious we are, things can and do go wrong. As a […]

In Search Of Causal Factors The pilots of an Air Force training jet saw the crop-duster seconds before the two airplanes collided 5,000 feet above rural Oklahoma about 11 a.m. on Jan. 18, the NTSB said in its preliminary report, posted Thursday. The two pilots in the Cessna T-37B jet ejected safely. The pilot of […]

A couple of months ago we got into an extended discussion of emergencies here in the Pilot’s Lounge at the virtual airport as a result of a gear-up landing gone seriously wrong. The column that evolved generated a fair amount of comment, including one from Dr. Alex Aimette, who has taught surgery for some years […]

AVweb’s Rick Durden recently corresponded with a surgery instructor who described one of the methods he used to teach new surgeons: He had them write down everything that could go wrong during an upcoming operation and then set out what should be done to deal with each anomaly. When he became a pilot, Dr. Aimette […]