Search Results for: vfr

It was my Sunday morning to pick up the doughnuts on the way to the pilot’s lounge at the virtual airport, so I wanted to get there early. If it’s your doughnut day and you show up after the regulars are already ensconced in the ratty old recliners, swilling coffee and telling flying lies, you’re […]

In another world and another age, when I lived in Connecticut, several times a year I’d hop in the Mooney and fly down to DCA, walk to the Metro, thence to the NTSB’s basement to pore over accident reports. This led quite naturally to my penchant for reducing eye-bulging, bowel-loosening fear to actual numbers so […]

Many of today’s workplaces seek to create a formalized “safety culture,” an environment where employees practice behaviors that minimize accidents, look out for their co-workers and where reporting unsafe conditions is encouraged, not subject to retaliation, and frequently rewarded. It can be a great goal, but it often creates an exaggerated sense of safety where […]

I recall an instructor, who before signing students off for the commercial checkride, would explain a few things he felt were critical when exercising commercial privileges. First, commercial pilots had to be smooth. After all, paying passengers would not be impressed if we could not fly the airplane well. Second, commercial pilots had to be […]

AVweb’sGeneral Aviation Accident Bulletinis taken from the pages of our sister publication,Aviation Safetymagazine. All the reports listed here are preliminary and include only initial factual findings about crashes. You can learn more about the final probable cause in the NTSB’s website atwww.ntsb.gov. Final reports appear about a year after the accident, although some take longer. […]

Family members of passengers killed in the 2016 crash of a Cessna 182 in Tennessee are claiming controllers should have warned the non-instrument-rated pilot he was about to hit a mountain in IMC. Pilot David Starling, his eight-year-old son Hunter and the pilot’s girlfriend Kim Smith died when the Skylane hit the cloud-shrouded 6,500-foot mountain […]

Due to a mix-up on my part, I walked into the pilot’s lounge at the virtual airport an hour prior to the time I was scheduled to fly with a student. I found a magazine I hadn’t read and sunk into one of the worn, old recliners, trying to keep quiet so I wouldn’t interrupt […]

A year and a half ago, it dawned on me that what I most enjoyed about my previous career as a science communications consultant was when I got to commute to visit clients in my faithful Cessna 180. With some 1500 hours in my logbook—accumulated primarily on those business trips—I sent out my rsum to […]

Garmin’s G500H TXi touchscreen flight display has now been certified, the company announced on Thursday. The display, which was designed for normal category VFR helicopters, is compatible with existing system sensors in rotorcraft equipped with the original G500H. It is available in 10.6-inch, 7-inch portrait and 7-inch landscape versions. Garmin also announced that a new […]

Flying is peaceful, the engine droning, wind whistling, your mind roaming to different thoughts as it gives birth to a new perspective. You reach out for your thermos to sip some hot coffee—but it’s not hot anymore. You start feeling cold, alone, and want to talk to someone, but you can’t. You fear that your […]