Features

Overheard while being vectored to the ILS 10 at KMSY the other day: Approach: Jet 123, maintain 9,000. Jet 123: Um, ok, we’re gonna go through it. Approach: That’s ok, climb and maintain 10,000. Jet 123: Uh, we’re on our way back down to 9,000, now. Approach: Well, 10 is available, you’re welcome to climb […]

Yes, it’s coming! But don’t get excited. You don’t really want what is coming, but you’re going to get it anyway. Remember when I wrote Say Again? #49: Come Up a Bad Cloud? Well, the “storm” is here.They say everybody has a talent. I don’t know if you want to call this a talent or […]

Taxi Into Position And Hold Regarding the Question of the Week about Taxi Into Position and Hold (QOTW, Mar. 23):My passenger counted 13 airplanes waiting for takeoff during one busy afternoon at Addison airport in Texas (KADS — single, 7000-foot runway, under DFW Class B). Who knows how many it would have been without Taxi […]

Controllers on the ball… Heard while established on a seven-mile final to Runway 1 at Republic Airport in Farmingdale, NY (FRG) January 1, 2002… Arrow N1234: Republic Tower, Arrow 1234 nine miles north, landing with Victor. Tower: Arrow 234 report the right downwind Runway 1. Arrow 234: Tower, any chance we could get a straight […]

Walking out of the doctor’s office, holding the piece of paper on which the duly authorized Aviation Medical Examiner attested that, as of a few moments ago, I met the minimum standards to hold an airman medical certificate, I breathed a sigh of relief and headed out to the Pilot’s Lounge at the virtual airport. […]

When Diamond announced its diesel-powered Twin Star three years ago, we figured the companys grasp on reality was, at best, tenuous. In the current market, who could possibly be interested in a new light twin? We were wrong, of course. Diamond has done well with the Twin Star and having flown the airplane, it reminds […]

User Fees Thanks for your great article [on user fees; NewsWire, Mar. 13]. I am consistently amazed about how intensely they (the airlines and the FAA) keep pushing a bad idea. Forgive me for stating the obvious, but are we seriously taking advice from companies whose business plan was something along the lines of, “Lose […]

Galaxy Quest is truly one of my favorite movies, a splendid yet warm-hearted send-up of every schlocky sci-fi series you’ve ever seen. In it, we learn that the crew’s motto — “Never give up, never surrender” — begins its bane but concludes its savior.Recently, this phrase has been threading through my gray matter like some […]