Features

Chicago Tribulations It’s too funny that Mayor Daley would lament how his city doesn’t have any jets (NewsWire, May 16). He’s the one who literally kicked both the Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard out of his city in the middle 1990s.I guess he doesn’t consider the F-16s in Madison, Wisc., close enough to […]

Overheard on the Houston Deperture frequency… DEP: Aircraft XYZ, Contact Yao Ming on 123.45 Pilot: …Huh? DEP: Houston Center

I‘ve been threatening to write this article for a while now and it’s as good a time as any. If you want to start an argument among pilots you only have to ask one little question: “Yeah, but what happens if you go NORDO?” If you read any aviation forums on the Internet, you know […]

General Aviation has seen an interesting and uncommon change recently: A new certificate is now available. Sport Pilot has been much-awaited, touted, and striven-for by many dedicated individuals and organizations whose goal was to help broaden the appeal of GA.Sport Pilot offers a new group of people the ability to participate in, help support, and […]

In a previous column I called for the need to change the way we train pilots and I suggested that scenario-based training (SBT) would be a way to meet the needs of the growing numbers of pilots who use their airplanes as transportation tools without leaving behind the purely recreational flyer. (After all, somebody has […]

D.C. Intrusion AVweb Wrote (NewsWire, May 12): “Errant Pilots Cause Washington Scare” While I enjoy the AVweb magazine, I think the proper headline should be, “35,000 People Terrorized By The Federal Government.”On Wednesday, 35,000 people were needlessly told that their lives were in danger and to run wildly into the streets because an incompetent government […]

Overheard and unfortunately timely… Pilot: Unknown airport with Cessna 150 circling overhead … Identify yourself!

It was a sodden, April Saturday afternoon in the Pilot’s Lounge at the virtual airport. The first unseasonably warm days of spring had brought out the tulips, hyacinths and optimistic pilots in droves. Frustratingly, on this weekend the weather had reverted to the precipitation that has been reputed to bring flowers in the subsequent month. […]