Flight Training

You have to hand it to the FAA. This is a government agency that’s gifted in its ability to tweak the rules in a way that makes we, the regulated, twist, dance, squirm and shimmy in the most creative ways. The latest example came last week when the FAA revised its standards for teaching that […]

The FAA has issued a Safety Alert reminding instructors, students and other general aviation pilots that the advised procedure for practicing slow-flight maneuvers has changed. The FAA’s new advice intends to correct “inconsistencies” in the previous standard for maneuvering during slow flight, as outlined in the Airplane Flying Handbook published in 2004, and the latest […]

I am an instructor in Germany and was with a student flying to his first towered airport. The aircraft has no GPS installed and visibility was around 4-5 km in mist. We were given the entry into the control zone via VFR reporting point “November.” Tower (in a kind, investigative voice): “D-HR you are a […]

A group of Canadian pilots will bring history to life by flying replica First World War fighters over a ceremony commemorating the Battle of Vimy Ridge next April. view on YouTube

 The Wall Street Journal is reporting the FAA is considering reducing the number of hours military pilots must have before they can be airline first officers. An industry-labor panel has recommended that military pilots with as little as 500 hours be allowed to slide directly into the right seat of airliners. The current minimum […]

Every primary student who’s at least been ready to solo has experienced a few stalls and recoveries. If they’re lucky, they also are introduced to different kinds of stalls, and how the ways we enter them can help determine their characteristics. Along the way, we learn ways to recover from them. We learn these maneuvers […]

A new nonprofit group based in southern New England aims to address the deterioration of basic stick-and-rudder skills among pilots, and is starting out with a focus on CFIs, says Bob Berlyn, the group’s executive director. Berlyn, a former airline pilot and CFI, is an FAA safety inspector in Norwood, Massachusetts. “Everywhere I go, I […]

The late and much-celebrated fighter pilot General Robin Olds delighted in telling the story of sitting in the front seat of an F-4 headed into visual-range combat in Vietnam and telling his younger backseater that he had it on good authority that what they were seeing wasn’t actually happening. That is, the F-4 design brief […]

AirVenture is about airplanes, but it’s also about people and in this video commentary, AVweb’s Jeff Van West reveals that to attract young people to aviation, we need to show them what they’re interested in. view on YouTube

For at least the last 40 years, the precautionary, off-airport landing has rarely been taught. It’s certainly not required on a checkride and pilots who have a mechanical or weather problem are taught to go to the nearest airport and only attempt to land “out” (as glider pilots say) when the engine actually quits. Pilots […]