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Letter of the Week:Risking Cancer to Keep Flying Regarding your Question of the Week on medical status: I get a special issuance every year. One of the requirements is for a nuclear scan for the heart. My current specialist says I should have one only when needed and he will know when it is needed. […]

In spring 2003, I was halfway through my flight training. My instructor and I were chatting about air traffic control. He’d just visited the local TRACON. From his description, I pictured a dark room filled with the intense chatter of men and women half-lit by radar scopes and blinking sci-fi lights. A few short years […]

Almost 15 years ago a well-known professional golfer named Payne Stewart was a passenger in a Lear 35 that departed Orlando, Florida for Dallas, Texas. The departure was unremarkable. Three minutes after the last communications with the Lear it made a turn consistent with a human input, but just three minutes later ATC was unable […]

As anyone who’s paid attention to Central U.S. weather the last few months knows, it’s been a particularly violent spring across “Tornado Alley.” Midwest storms made national news and reintroduced repeat targets—such as Moore, Okla. Well ahead of the storms and far in front of the inevitable miles of destruction images, Americans coast to coast […]

The first time you start the engine on your airplane, you should be really close to completion. Not 90% done and 90% to-go close, but really, really close. This is because you will be removing the preservative measures that should have been in place all through the construction process, and you will now expose your […]

Letter of the Week:ALPA’s Medical Bombshell I’m a retired Northwest Airlines (now Delta) 747-400 captain. I was a member of ALPA for 38 years. The letter ALPA put out against medical is baseless. Due to the fact many ALPA pilots and those representing pilots at other carriers, retired and active, own GA aircraft, I think […]

During the annual EAA Legal Advisory Council Board Meeting on July 24, 2015, our special guest Reggie Govan, the recently installed FAA Chief Counsel laid out several changes underway at the FAA. First, enforcement (administrative and/or legal action brought against certificate holders for alleged regulatory violations) will no longer be conducted through the nine FAA […]

In May 2008 the FAA published five new SAIBs or Suggested Airworthiness Information Bulletins on propeller maintenance. While these bulletins do not carry the weight of an AD, they do come about as a result of discussions with field organizations such as aircraft type clubs as well as maintenance shops who identify problems they see […]

You’re approaching the end of an excellent flight on a lovely day; life is good. Now, on downwind with the speed down into the gear extension range, you move the gear handle to the down position, keeping your hand on it until you get a solid gear down indication—as you’ve done scores of times. Except. […]

For many pilots, the first realization that the bellies of their airplanes are becoming hazardous waste sites is when ATC advises that their transponders are intermittent. Investigation reveals a layer of goo on the belly antennas, doing its best to block the signal. Frequently cleaning the by-products of engine operation—oil, grease, soot and other delicacies—off […]