Search Results for: vfr

Pattern Wars: Part Deux Great article, Paul. You’ve hit the nail on the head with NORDOs and common-sense safety. If someone can splurge on an iPad for navigation, it’s safe to assume they can also afford a transceiver for communication. Now, on straight-ins—they’re not going away anytime soon. It’s important then, for everyone, especially at […]

Sigh. They’re back. The modern resurrection of the pattern wars. As an inveterate FAA jailhouse lawyer, I already know the arguments. “Discouraged doesn’t mean prohibited.” “Advisory circulars aren’t regulatory, that’s why they’re called advisory.” “The FAA has no clue what’s really going on in traffic patterns.” And so on and on and on. The occasion […]

Humans are really good at rationalizing. We do it all the time, every time when we cut corners, break rules or ignore evidence in pursuit of a successful outcome. We continue because it often has no consequences. The thing about rationalizing, though, is it can change our behavior. What once seemed wrong starts to feel […]

Many years ago I was flying my Cessna 182 from the San Francisco Bay Area east toward Columbia (O22) in the foothills of the Sierra range. This was right at the time all the various Northern and Central California approach controls were united in a single facility as they are now, all using the name […]

As we’ve watched aircraft and fuel prices skyrocket amid a “hard” insurance market, we’ve been wondering whether those variables are conspiring to push prospective pilots to work for a sport pilot rating rather than the private ticket and whether current pilots are downsizing to light sport aircraft and taking advantage of the more liberal sport […]

On a warm summer afternoon, a two-ship flight consisting of a Beech A-36 Bonanza and a Piper PA-31 Navajo lifted off from Newport, Rhode Island. One made it through a looming storm; one didn’t. Short Trip The two airplanes made a gradual right turn to the southwest out over the grayish-blue waters of Rhode Island […]

We were at 7,000 feet, in and out of clouds, destination a VFR-only airport. Thinking it might be hard to get below the clouds as we continued toward our destination, given the controllers’ MVA, and knowing there was a reasonable ceiling beneath the clouds now that we were past the mountains, I cancelled IFR and […]

FAA To Require Secondary Flight Deck Barrier This is a response to 9/11. It’s sobering to think that new college students (and even 19-year-olds) today do not remember this event: to them, it is something they learned about in history class and from their parents. By the time this rule change is implemented, many FOs […]

Starting with the June 15 release, FAA enroute IFR charts, low and high altitude, will lack much of the customary flight information in foreign airspace bordering the U.S. The decision was announced in a May 23 Charting Notice and publicized by the FAA on Saturday in a safety memo to a subscriber list. The agency […]

More than 2,000 flights were delayed and more than 100 canceled in New York and other northeast airports on Wednesday because of the smoke that is enveloping a big swath of the country. Huge wildfires in Quebec and a stubborn high-pressure system set up over the middle of the continent have resulted in some of […]