Learn to Fly

Aviation has never lacked for dumb ideas. It’s what drives innovation. “Hey, Orville, wanna jump off a sand dune strapped to these really cool wings I made in the bike shop?” What seemed stupid in 1903 is recognized as pioneering genius today. Likewise, countless other notions such as flying inside clouds without reference to the […]

From 2005 to 2015, my small flight school offered training in the famously rare Comco Ikarus C42, which was (and still is) manufactured in Germany. I say “rare” because (to my knowledge), only 13 C42s were ever imported in the U.S., and at one point I had three of them in my hangar. It was […]

A Canadian company has bought the bankrupt Dowling College at Long Island’s Brookhaven Airport and plans to rebuild the school’s aviation academic and technical offerings with a focus on aeronautical engineering. The college’s 105-acre campus is adjacent to and has access to Brookhaven’s two 4000-foot runways and has a hangar, a dormitory, classrooms and a […]

A young pilot who some sources say is a student ducked power lines, dodged cars, buildings and pedestrians and put her Cessna 172 down without a scratch on a busy Huntington Beach, California, street on Friday. Dash cam and surveillance video showed the unidentified woman maneuvering the aircraft in gusty conditions to avoid obstacles (the […]

Republic Airways announced today that it is launching a pilot training academy to help address the shortage of qualified commercial pilots in the U.S. The Leadership In Flight Training (LIFT) Academy, which will be located at the Indianapolis International Airport (IND) in Indianapolis, Indiana, is designed to be a direct-to-hire path for students. Graduates of […]

As the winners of this year’s Aviation Design Challenge, four students and their teacher from Erie 1 BOCES Harkness Career and Technical Center in Cheektowaga, New York, will be traveling to Glasair Aviation to help build a plane at Glasair’s Arlington, Washington, manufacturing facility, announced GAMA on Tuesday. The trip is scheduled to take place […]

As an FAA Designated Pilot Examiner (DPE), I’ve felt like my pass rate on practical tests has been declining over the last couple of years. It started as a gut feeling, but then I compared my recent numbers with my pass rate from a few years ago and found it was also statistically true. It […]

Although the pilot shortage has mainly manifested in regional flight cancellations in the U.S., the largest Persian Gulf carrier, Emirates, is reportedly ready to park 18 percent of its fleet. Airline Geeks says Emirates will also reduce pilot staffing on long-haul flights and that its deployment of pilots might be part of the reason it’s […]

It’s arguably the best time in history to begin a flying career. Never before could a pilot expect to become a jet first officer so rapidly. Sure, it’s a challenge to log the time needed to earn the ATP that’s now required. But demand is so great that as soon as a pilot meets that […]

In this installation of AVweb’s series on flight simulators we’re going to take a look at a company that uses an innovative program to bring access to sophisticated—and expensive—flight simulators to users who otherwise could not afford them. Started in 2010 by Xylon Saltzman, a flight instructor and charter pilot who was unhappy with the […]