The Pilot’s Lounge

In the weeks since September 11, I’ve found that I have sometimes avoided visiting with my friends in the Pilot’s Lounge at the virtual airport simply because of the gloom and doom that has become the preferred conversation of so many pilots. While I join them in not being impressed by the manner in which […]

The events of the eleventh of September affected all of us deeply. The Pilot’s Lounge at the virtual airport became jammed that day and has remained so with pilots who have come together and try to sort out the myriad emotions that each felt. The attacks, the subsequent groundings and then the national suspicion of […]

Not long ago I wrote a column about the discussions we had in the pilot’s lounge here at the virtual airport concerning training instrument students in actual instrument conditions. There was a lot of feedback from readers and, overall, it turned out that a fairly large majority of people was in favor of such training. […]

Editor’s Note: This column should be printed out and posted on airport bulletin boards everywhere now and again next July. After getting back from Oshkosh I unpacked the airplane, put it away and walked into the pilot’s lounge here at the virtual airport to see what had happened while I was gone. One of the […]

Summertime. Here at the virtual airport the talk in the pilot’s lounge is of aerobatics, airshows and performers; who is worth going to see and which ones the faithful can miss if a choice has to be made? The other day, a group of us in the lounge were, um, discussing – yes, that’s it, […]

Last month I told you I’d spent an evening here in the pilot’s lounge at the virtual airport writing two letters. I wrote them after returning from a trip where I had seen, talked to, and briefly flown with, an airport kid, a kid who wanted to fly more than anything in the world. The […]

It’s another one of those late evenings here in the pilot’s lounge. I’m here because it’s a place that is conducive to thinking. I returned from a trip a couple of hours ago, put the airplane away and started to leave the airport but turned around and came back here to the lounge where it […]

The combination of the arrival of spring and daylight savings time seems to have a way of luring pilots back to their airports from months of hibernation. Here at the virtual airport, the pilot’s lounge is getting more crowded. From where I sit, I hear plans being made by a group to fly out for […]

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 […]

Editor’s Note: This is the second of two articles by AVweb columnists on FBOs. If you haven’t already, be sure to read Howard Fried’s companion column “Eye of Experience # 37: The Place of the FBO in the Scheme of Things.” Sometimes things here in the Pilot’s Lounge at the virtual airport get a bit […]