Flight Planning

The best way to shorten an international airline flight isn’t necessarily to knock yourself out—in the case of one Virgin Atlantic flight from Los Angeles to London, the trick is to catch a whopping big tailwind. Around 10:30 p.m. on Monday night, as the Virgin 787 cruised along at 35,000 feet, it posted an 801-MPH […]

Blame it on YouTube. Sailors have an affliction they call “bigger boat disease” or “one-foot-itis,” and I was starting to feel the rumblings of the aviator’s version. I had been flying and enjoying my Fisher FP-404 biplane for the past three years but was starting to bump into its limitations: low speed, modest climb rate, […]

In most circumstances, an aircraft sales rep wants as much attention as possible for his product but Rick Rief had people calling 911 every time he did a demo flight in St. Louis last week. The Icon Aircraft rep was twice greeted by first responders when he landed his A5 on the Mississippi River. Bystanders […]

My brother, J.R., and I have made a number of flights to the Bahamas in one of our two airplanes. Once we had a crowd, so we took both airplanes. He was in his Cessna 182 and I was in my Cessna 206. On the return trip while crossing central Florida, near Orlando, on a […]

Ever thought about building your own kit plane? Finally settled on the right ADS-B equipment for your mission? We want to hear about it. From jets and LSAs to avionics and headsets, AVweb‘s pilot survey is seeking information on what kinds of aircraft you’ve been flying and the equipment you use in the air. “The […]

Aviation groups are lining up to support a bill that would keep the FAA funded during a government shutdown by temporarily shifting its source of money. House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., and Aviation Subcommittee Chairman Rick Larsen, D-Wash., introduced the bill on Friday. If passed, the bill would allow money […]

ForeFlight has introduced a new interactive airport familiarization tool for its Mobile Integrated Flight App. According to ForeFlight, Airport 3D View simulates airport environments around the world by using the company’s mapping and synthetic vision platform to combine high-resolution terrain with aerial imagery. As shown in the video below, 3D View lets users pan and […]

Many of today’s workplaces seek to create a formalized “safety culture,” an environment where employees practice behaviors that minimize accidents, look out for their co-workers and where reporting unsafe conditions is encouraged, not subject to retaliation, and frequently rewarded. It can be a great goal, but it often creates an exaggerated sense of safety where […]

A few days ago, departing Minot North Dakota for Duluth in a Skylane, I asked ATC if the NOTAM for military training at Duluth had the airport closed, or whether it was open to GA traffic. He asked me to stand by for a minute, and then said, “It’s closed at the moment, but will […]