Reader Mail

Accident Probe: Lack Of Peer Pressure I worked at Flight Service for 20+ years at many locations including Utah and Alaska. Aside from aircraft handling accidents (moose stalls, density altitude issues, running out of gas, flying up a canyon where terrain elevation increases faster than your climb rate, etc.), I’ve come to the conclusion that […]

Automation And The Boeing 737 MAX It is clear to me, there is a basic disconnect by designers/engineering/manufacturing, with the art of flying. Automation is supposed to augment or replace hand-flying. To accomplish that, the design team has to clearly understand flying. Not only from the basic lift/thrust/drag/gravity, but how an airplane feels when flying […]

Pilot Union Defends Ethiopian Pilots, Questions 737 MAX Cert Seriously? First, the one of the basic rules for flying an aircraft in an emergency is: Fly the Aircraft. The power remained in climb power throughout the emergency all the way until it crashed going well over VMO. The faster the aircraft flew, the more down […]

Uber Elevate: Pick A Fantasy Perhaps the aircraft themselves will eventually become a reality, but I can’t see the usage of them as Uber describes ever happening. For one, as others have pointed out, there’s the noise issue. Enough people moving next to an airport complain as it is, and I’m sure people who moved […]

The Desanctification of AoA We installed an AOA called a “Lift Reserve Indicator” in our missionary C182. It’s purpose was exactly what the name implied…at any given airspeed, weight, bank angle, and G load, you knew how close you were to a stall far more precisely than indicated airspeed, sound, feel, buffet, etc. The instructions […]

Electric Aircraft Replies to last week’s letter regarding electric aircraft: 1. In flight aircraft fires are one of the most deadly potential scenarios a pilot has to deal with. Smoke is also a worry. REPLY: We have designed our battery pack in a ventilated compartment with a smoke detector and a special instant fire stop. […]

A Hanger By Any Other Name Paul has encapsulated the private aviation hangar, found almost anywhere in the world, perfectly. Indeed, his descriptions surpass that which pictures could provide. It took me back, from the elderly cylinders to cans of paint and solvents, long-forgotten magnetos, maybe a bent prop in a corner, a box of […]

Boeing 737 MAX That design is so utterly incompetent and the FAA allowing it is so utterly incompetent that it boggles the mind of this pilot flying for 35 years! Clearly the airline rule of requiring redundancy of any component with a greater than 1 in 10,000,000 chance of failure was ignored. Considering the MCAS […]

uAvionix SkyBeacon ADS-B Installations In his article on the uAvionix SkyBeacon, Larry Anglisano said that a pilot could ask ATC if they see his ADS-B. It is true that ATC has the capability to see whether an aircraft is ADS-B equipped, we discourage pilots from asking that question. It encourages unnecessary frequency congestion and the […]

LAX 24L: A Runway With A Tragic History GREAT, well written article by Myron Nelson regarding the 24L accident at LAX. As a retired major airline captain with 35 years of experience flying into LAX, I could relate completely…Well done. Tom Rosen Great recap of the runway 24 L indecent. I remember it well because […]