Search Results for: vfr

While it may be a shallow measuring gauge, the most popular indicator of the success of an aircraft refurb is the paint job. A good one can be used to disguise many ills while a bad one can overwhelm the perfection of the new leather interior and top-of-the-line glass panel. So, in the process of […]

Speed matters. Ask any pilot. Frustratingly, speed costs money and lots of speed, as the warbird set says, costs cubic money. In the single-engine piston world, we’d each love to blast across the sky over 230 knots in a Cessna TTX, yet for most, the exchequer doesn’t quite stretch to the nearly three-quarters of a […]

The eleventh annual Archie League Medal of Safety Awards, given at a ceremony in Las Vegas on March 4, honored fourteen controllers in nine regions who assisted aircraft to avoid or address emergencies. This year’s stories include diverting airliners on converging courses and helping a VFR pilot descend through IMC to an airport. The Archie […]

Whether we accept it or not, it’s true that humans tend to worry, sometimes obsessively and irrationally, about things that might harm them. That’s how terrorism works. Unless you’re in, say, Aleppo or Mosul, the likelihood of being killed in a terrorist attack is close to zero. Yet we duly have our shoes X-rayed and […]

The FAA executive in charge of integrating unmanned aerial systems (UAS) into the National Airspace System (NAS) says that if and when a small UAS (sUAS) and a manned aircraft collide, the manned aircraft isn’t likely to suffer serious damage. Jim Williams was speaking to a nervous audience of helicopter operators at HAI Heli-Expo in […]

The Pilot’s Bill of Rights 2, which would broaden third-class medical exemptions and expand legal rights, began its journey through the legislative assembly line this week as GA Caucus members in the U.S. Senate and House introduced companion bills. Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., introduced S. 571 as an expansion of his legislation that was signed […]

It’s a fact of aeronautical life that virtually every pilot has to complete some form of recurrent training every two years to fly as pilot in command in Part 91 operations. While FAR Part 61.56 outlines a number of methods of meeting its mandate, another fact of aeronautical life is that most pilots comply by […]

Letter of the Week:Drones No Danger I’m a commercial pilot and small drone operator and want to thank you for not joining the unfounded media hysteria over small UAV operation in the U.S. Regarding the “numerous” drone sightings reported by pilots as tabulated by the FAA, I’ve examined them, and the most frequently used words […]

Commercial operators of small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS) weighing less than 55 pounds will have to pass an FAA knowledge test every two years and their aircraft will have to be registered under regulations proposed in a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking released by the FAA and the DOT Sunday (PDF). In a telephone news briefing, […]

When I was reading over the draft small UAS regs and analysis that leaked out of the FAA over the weekend, I couldn’t help thinking … man, this feels like a breech birth assisted with a crowbar. For one thing, the timing caught the FAA off guard. Thanks to the wonders of the web, the […]