Reader Mail

Short Final: I’ll Call You Back Reminds me of a flight out of Anchorage to Palmer VFR. Palmer is on the other side of the USAF base and not far in a fast airplane. I had arrived IFR and this was my first time into ANC. It was a sunny summer day and there was […]

New Study Looks At Why Pilots Withhold Health Information I’ve been a physician for 36 years, a pilot 25 years, and an AME 22 years so I have something to bring to the conversation. I took the survey and I do not think it will bring valuable information, but perhaps a follow up will. I […]

Preflighting Propellers I had a customer call on a Sunday morning saying his “dawn patrol” flight was canceled because his wooden prop was leaking oil! It was the crankshaft seal of course. Also, the back side of the prop is the curved side, not the flat side. At least that’s the way I learned it […]

Changing Of The Guard I started flying in 1966 out of Zamperini Field (KTOA) in Torrance, CA, at a time when general aviation began to flourish in Southern California. The airport tallied approximately 348,000 operations annually, making it a busy airport within what is now the SOCAL domain – an excellent area to learn radio […]

Long-Range Defense Great article! I agree with most of it but would even go beyond. First time I did a REAL cross country on my own I was awakened to all the stuff you don’t learn in PRACTICE cross countries. My instructor told me nothing about tie down fees for overnights, courtesy cars, finding food, […]

FAA Calls On Laser Manufacturers To Add Warning Labels When I was flying for an airline several years ago (I’m now retired) we were hit with a green laser. Not fun. Luckily we were not hit in the eyes, but it could have been very harmful. Rik C. Last year I was on short final […]

Last Boeing 747 Delivered My first flight in a 747 was in ’73 that started at Frankfurt while coming home from Germany on leave from my Army unit in Germany. The Pan Am bird had so few passengers that they allowed me to sleep laying out across seats in the center of the aircraft and […]

Drone Collision Report Issued The problem with drones… you can’t see them in a hover from the air. From the ground you can see the dot in the sky. When a drone isn’t moving, it blends perfectly into the ground clutter. You will not be able to see or avoid it. There was a guy […]

FAA To Expand Safety Management Systems Requirements Safety is a menacingly powerful word. While many safety aspects can be quantified with historical data, assessment qualitative and emotional aspects tend to vary with the situation or implementation. I operated with SMS requirements throughout my career that ranged from, “How you will mitigate this risk” to “Prove […]

Why Aircraft Engines Should Be Hard To Start My first airplane had an A-75 Continental with no electrical system so you had to hand prop it. If you flooded it, per the manual, you needed to turn the prop backwards several times to “evacuate the cylinders” before trying again and sometimes that worked fine. Sometimes […]