Search Results for: vfr

I like to fly at night. The air generally is smoother, there’s less traffic, the ATC frequencies are not as busy and ground illumination, the moon and the stars can compete in one of the best light shows you’ll ever see. Of course, humans were never meant to fly in the first place, and we […]

Are Pilot Skills Worse Than Ever? A lot of places where pilot skills are down are places where we won’t expect to see accident rates rise until much later. These are big flight schools pumping out new pilots for airlines to put in the right-hand seat. These pilots are not in command of aircraft themselves […]

Weather articles typically focus on big weather makers like fronts, systems, thunderstorms, and the weather they all produce. But atmospheric stability is a less‑talked‑about process that works in the background and “primes” the atmosphere in many ways. While you might dodge thunderstorms and fly past frontal zones, stability (and the lack of it) is embedded […]

The general aviation industry has long known about the vulnerability of the engine-driven vacuum pump. This device supplies the energy to spin vacuum-driven primary flight instruments, typically the artificial horizon and directional gyro of a so-called “steam gauge” airplane. It’s an Achilles heel of an otherwise IFR-capable platform and, although conscientious pilots train for so-called […]

My career in aviation started in 2006, when I earned my private pilot certificate flying in some of the most congested airspace in the world. Today, I fly mainly Cessnas, but over the years have logged time in Pipers, Diamonds and other aircraft types. My passion for aviation took me to the point where the […]

Huckleberry Pancakes And Grassroots Aviation Success That was such a lovely piece to read. I was once, decades ago, a young earth bound person who lived, breathed for Aviation and Aviators. My bedroom walls were overflowing with really bad hand drawn pictures of Airplanes, cut out pictures from Flying Magazine and the best…a Marine Corps […]

Shreveport-based Metro Aviation has accepted the first Airbus EC145e helicopter produced at the manufacturer’s Columbus, Mississippi, plant. It’s the first of 25 ships that Metro ordered in 2018.  “Metro is pleased to continue a long-term relationship with Airbus, providing aircraft that meet a wide range of customer needs, and we are especially happy with the […]

The FAA is now requiring all pilots filing flight plans to use of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) flight plan format. The transition, which the agency first planed for October 2015, went into effect on Tuesday. According to the FAA, using the ICAO form (PDF) will allow for a greater variety of entry types […]

The aviation industry in recent years has highlighted loss of control in-flight (LOC-I) as the leading cause of general aviation fatal accidents. Many aviation organizations, including government agencies, have devoted considerable time and resources to target this problem and develop effective mitigations to reduce the number of LOC-I accidents. Much of that effort focuses on […]

The pilots of Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s Citation Latitude told the NTSB the aircraft “did not respond as expected” as they tried to go around after a rough landing at Elizabethton Airport in Tennessee earlier this month. In the preliminary report on the Aug. 15 accident, which destroyed the aircraft and resulted in minor injuries to […]