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The results of the New York TRACON’s Safety Survey “Are YouReady for METAR?” are in, and the results are unanimous:No one around here knows anything about METAR! Well, in the interest of safety, the mystery of METAR can nowbe revealed. METAR is the ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization)meteorological format for Aviation Routine Weather Reports. Inorder […]

Beginning in July 1996, the United States will undergo the mostsignificant change for observing, reporting, and coding surfaceweather observations and terminal forecasts in the past fortyyears. Not since the early 1950s, when the present airways code(commonly known as Surface Aviation Observation or SA code), andTerminal Forecast (FT) codes were adopted, has there been sucha major […]

Q1. What is METAR/SPECI and what do the acronyms stand for? A1. METAR is the international standard code format for hourly surfaceweather observations which is analogous to the SA coding currently used in theUS. The acronym roughly translates from French as Aviation Routine WeatherReport. SPECI is merely the code name given to METAR formatted productswhich […]

$ maintenance check indicator – light intensity + heavy intensity / indicator that visual range data follows; separator between temperature and dew point data. ACC altocumulus castellanus ACFT MSHP aircraft mishap ACSL altocumulus standing lenticular cloud ALP airport location point AO1 automated station without precipitation discriminator AO2 automated station with precipitation discriminator APRNT apparent APRX […]

The NDB approach is generally considered one of the tougher itemson the flight test for the instrument rating. If you asked abunch of instrument-rated pilots to list their favorite approachequipment, you’d probably get a list something like this: # 1 — ILS# 2 — LOC only (no glideslope)# 3 — VOR# 4 — NDB The […]

On the Starship Enterprise, when something goes awry, an excitedengineer-type says stuff like, “A warp-core breach is imminent!”This is accompanied by ominous humming and flashing warning lightsto give you the idea that the ship is about to explode. It never does. That’s because the Captain knows to remind theengineer that in case of warp-core breach, […]

During a typical IFR flight, you probably make lots of decisionswithout much forethought. One of them is the altitude to fileand fly. Unless there’s ice around or known rocks in the cloudsor an intense head or tailwind, what difference does it make? All you have to do is look at the published MEAs and be […]

The transcontinental lightplane flight of7-year-old Jessica Dubroff was strictly a made-for-TV event fromthe outset. Although billed as an attempt to “set the record”for the youngest pilot ever to make such a flight, there was norecord at stake here. Neither the National Aeronautics Associationnor even the Guiness Book of World Records recognizes such”youngest pilot” feats. When […]

Near the end of a long trip, actual IMC and perhaps flown withno autopilot, being vectored to final can be a great relief. Butthere’s a downside, too. A pilot anxious to get established onthe approach and on the ground might be lulled into allowing positionawareness to lapse at a time when he or she can […]

If you’re like most instrument pilots, you spent a lot of trainingtime flying full approaches, muddling through procedure turnswhile you tried to figure out just exactly where the final approachcourse really was. Unfortunately, all that training wasn’t goodpractice for the real world; the full approach just isn’t theusual way of doin’ business. Vectors to final […]