Search Results for: vfr

Letter of the Week:Airline Pilot Training Regarding the new flight training regulations: I flew for the airlines most of my life (retired now) have more than 23,000 hours and several type ratings. When an airline I worked for first got the Canadair CL-65 regional jet, the failure rate for upgrade was more than 70 percent. […]

Legally, 14 CFR 91.123 says, When a pilot is uncertain of an ATC clearance, that pilot shall immediately request clarification from ATC. Seems easy enough, but under pressure of time, heavy weather and busy controllers we are tempted to assume that ATC knows its intentions and to accept a clearance as given. Egregious errors appear […]

The fragile relationship between avionics shops and aircraft owners is sometimes stressed at the end of a project. Thats partly because some owners have unrealisticexpectations, assuming the aircraft will be released right after a flight test. On the other hand, shops create stress for themselves when they overpromiseand offer the impression that work on the […]

Letter of the Week:Factoring Human Factors I was interested in the article on the KSN770 published in the Sept. 13 AVwebFlash, in which it states that “graybeards may still prefer [to use] a transfer key” as opposed to using touchscreen controls. I’m not a graybeard (is there a politically-correct term for female pilots, too?), but […]

For years, there was only two choices for a retrofit multi-function GPS navigator-either Garmin’s GNS430 or GNS530-or the current GTN650 and GTN750. Bendix King offered the KLN94 standalone GPS, but it wasn’t an all-in-one WAAS navigator with an open architecture. It also lacked a comm and nav radio and it didn’t have any multi function […]

The annual adventure trip to Arizona with my buddies would have been better if we could fly around the desert in a rented Cessna as we planned. An important part of that plan included my checkout and endorsement to rent the FBOs Skyhawk. Unfortunately, scheduling the checkout turned out to be more difficult than I […]

At AirVenture, Jeppesen has introduced a new app that runs a little against the trend in app development in general and frankly, Im happy to see it. As described in this video, the app is called Mobile FliteDeck VFR and its aimed specifically at VFR-only pilots. And given the way flying habits may be changing-less […]

Jeppesen has introduced the Mobile FliteDeck VFR for U.S. GA pilots to use on iPads. Until now only the IFR version was available but the VFR option has been available in Europe for a year. It offers numerous charting, navigation and flight-planning options with charts and data covering the whole continental U.S. Jeppesen said in […]

While it might be true that fear is just fear, the kind that comes in knowing youre running out of gas has a particular texture that seems uniquely capable of turning your brain to mush. I know this because like many pilots, Ive had the experience of nearly running an engine on air. I could […]

Automation is a routine part of our lives now, dictated by sweeping new technologies and consumer preferences. Arguably, the trend toward automation began in aviation in the 1970s. It has been debated and resisted by many in the aviation community, but the game has recently changed for both the airlines and general aviation. Yet, our […]