Flight Training

When trying to count and classify a group of pronghorn antelope from the air, you deal with lots of factors that aren’t included in most other general aviation flying. Where are the towers or power lines? Where’s the light coming from? Where’s the wind coming from and how strong is it? Where are the fences? […]

Florence “Shutsy” Reynolds of Connellsville, Penn., passed away Thursday, March 15, 2018, at home. She was 95. She took a Civilian Pilot Training Program at her local airport in Connellsville and completed it, receiving her pilot’s certificate at the end. According to the “Fly Girls the Series” blog, “Reynolds was required to sign a document […]

A bipartisan bill introduced in the Senate last week would provide $5 million each year from 2019 through 2023 to expand programs and apprenticeships that would train workers for careers in aviation maintenance. “Our aviation industry needs skilled workers, and the aviation-maintenance industry provides high-paying, high-skilled jobs across the country,”said Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., one […]

A new report this month from the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) says the Federal Aviation Administration lacked effective management controls over the “project level agreements (PLAs)—an internal control mechanism for documenting the agreed-upon work and managing project execution” for the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen). This program was implemented to meet the […]

The sport pilot rule allows anyone who wants a seaplane rating to do it with five or so hours of training and then an endorsement from an evaluating CFI. AVweb’s Paul Bertorelli recently did the rating at Jones Brothers Air and Sea Adventures in Tavares, Florida. Here’s his report. view on YouTube

AOPA has developed a curriculum for ninth-grade students that uses aviation to teach science, technology, engineering and math, and is offering it free to schoolteachers. Teachers will be introduced to the program through a professional development workshop offered June 26 to 28, which can be attended at AOPA headquarters in Frederick, Maryland, or taken online. […]

ADS-B and Privacy We are not properly addressing the privacy (in personal transportation) issues that are created by this system. Part of that discussion has to be the growing network of at-home computer users that are tracking private aircraft with FlightAware devices that are being pushed on the techie community by the flight tracking websites […]

Santa Barbara Municipal Airport has intersecting runways. Runway 7/25 handles all of the airlines and most private jets while the parallel 15/33 pair is for private piston aircraft—long as the normal westerly winds cooperate. Juggling the vast differences in approach speeds and timing on the intersecting runways requires a lot of skill and experience on […]

In my recent wanderings in the online aviation world, I came across this question in a few different places … if pilots are so scarce, why do airlines still require pilot applicants to have a four-year college degree? Especially since they often don’t seem to care what the degree is in … forestry or engineering […]