Features

An oldie, but a goodie…Overheard while flying freight near Frankfurt. ATC: F1243, desend and maintain 12-thousand. F1234: 12-thousand, F1234. ATC: F1234, can you make it to 12 in one minute? (short pause) F1234: Negative. The captain requests I inform you we’re going as fast as this Fokker will go. (silence) ATC: …Right. Lufthansa 456, turn […]

I‘m always fascinated by how little I know about the things I use every day. The ILS is one of those things. The ILS is the “bread and butter” of the instrument approaches. If there’s a choice, most pilots and most controllers will go with the ILS. (Actually, most would prefer a visual approach, but […]

Hunters Threatening Parachute Pilots I just read about hunters threatening parachute/ultralight pilots with a gun at Smartt Field in St Louis, Mo. (NewsWire, Dec. 26). If this were an airline passenger plane, the [person] with the gun would probably be spending the rest of his life behind bars, or possibly shot himself by the Sky […]

Disaster, exultation, milestones, conflict, celebration, tragedy, and remembrance … in 2005, the world of general aviation saw all that and more. Here’s our year-end review of the news, with links to AVweb’s original coverage for more details. Oshkosh Shows Us The Future If it seemed that after 100 years the world of flight would have […]

When congestion isn’t the real problem… Here is my recollection of a conversation heard on 128.25 last Saturday: Aircraft on Approach: Get off the runway I am landing. Aircraft on Runway: Maybe you should go around if I am not fast enough for you. Aircraft on Approach: I can’t, I have a terrible crosswind, I […]

V.P. Restricted Airspace The FAA must have the dumbest people in the world working for them. All the bad guys have to do is look where the restricted airspace is.Who in the world would have known where in the world is the Vice President’s new home?We do now thanks to the FAA and the new […]

Slow day at the FSS? I’m a student at Daniel Webster College, and one particularly nasty winter morning last year I was calling the briefer before my 7AM flight… Me: Good morning this is N—DW, I’d like a standard VFR brief for the Nashua area and … Briefer (cutting me off): You’re not going anywhere […]

While in the Pilot’s Lounge here at the virtual airport, I got to checking my email and found one that took me to task for asserting that the Temporary Flight Restrictions (TFRs) created as a result of Hurricane Katrina were ill-conceived and poorly planned. I had complained because of the difficulties reported by some pilots […]