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The NTSB supplied complete copies of the documents in its docket on the March 29, 2001, crash of a Gulfstream III bizjet on approach to the airport at Aspen, Colorado on CD-ROM. Data on the CD-ROM consists primarily of a series of TIFF images comprising the various documents in the docket. A display engine is […]

Current predictions indicate that within the next few years there will be a pilot and maintenance technician shortage that will impact the aviation industry in gigantic proportions. With fewer candidates for these jobs coming from the armed forces, the aviation industry – including the military – has come to view the female population as a […]

I guess I’m mean, but this is one of my favorite ways to trigger “go-around mode” in training and on checkrides. Not for me the old saw of “fire truck on the runway” or the like … much too mundane. I usually wait until the power is all the way off, flare is complete, and […]

Anarchy In Long Beach? It was almost as if someone with an axe to grind with the FAA had scripted it: As agency officials inside the Long Beach Convention Center discussed upheavals within the upper ranks of the FAA, another form of anarchy reigned outside. Instead of musical chairs and the “Washington Shuffle,” a small […]

It’s Thursday, May 18, 2000. My wife Donna and I get up with the alarm at 5:30 a.m. Today we are going to fly from Clarksburg, W.V., home base of our airplane, to St. Louis. The AFSS briefer relates how there is a strong low over Kansas City with a frontal system extending from there […]

NightFlyer was always one of my best students. We called Joe (not the same Joe I was flying with when we had the pitot static system failure) “NightFlyer” because he worked as a carpenter all day and usually came out in the evenings to fly. At any rate, he kept me on my toes and […]

The other day I had a very pleasant time flying with Eric as he scoured off some of the rust and demonstrated that he had a pretty good handle on this instrument flying stuff. As forecast, the weather was deteriorating, so much of the time we were in the clouds. After we landed, we sat […]

Sometimes I wonder that if in an earlier incarnation I was a great aviator. Because of that previous life, perhaps some of that superior genetic code lingers on inside of me. That is the only explanation that I can think of for my superior piloting skills. I am superior, you know. A natural-born pilot is […]

TYPE OF HONOR OR AWARD PRESENTED BY, DATE Raymond Gray Scholarship Union Pacific Railroad, 1939 Naval Aviator United States Navy, 1942 Tau Beta Pi University of Washington, 1948 Sigma Xi University of Washington, 1949 Lawrence Sperry Award, “for important contributions in aeronautical flight research at transonic and supersonic speeds up to Mach 2” Institute of […]

A. Scott Crossfield was bornOctober 2, 1921, in Berkeley, Calif. He took his first flight at age six in anoil company airplane, a flight that hooked him on aviation for life. DuringWorld War II he was a fighter pilot and fighter gunnery instructor in the U.S.Navy. In 1950, he joined NASA’s predecessor, the National Advisory […]