Learn to Fly

Seventy-year-old Vietnam veteran and CFII Rafael Sierra has created a short summer camp program in Thermal, Calif., that provides select high school students with ground school, one hour of flight training, and a student pilot certificate — all free. Sierra’s Coachella Valley Youth Aviation Education Program selects students on the basis of their essay submissions […]

Eight high-school students will win a free trip to the Glasair build center in Arlington, Wash., this June, in a new educational competition announced this week by GAMA and Build-A-Plane. The students will participate in Glasair’s “Two Weeks to Taxi” program, building two Sportsman airplanes and learning about science, technology, engineering and math. “This competition […]

In five years since its birth, Redbird has gone from zero to number one in its market niche. It has put more than 300 active-motion flight simulators into general aviation pilot training centers. It has introduced a compelling price for performance argument within the flight training segment. And it has wrapped all that in an […]

Build A Plane, a nonprofit group based in California that helps school groups to build their own aircraft, held its fourth annual Teachers Day at EAA AirVenture this week in Oshkosh. The program, which ran on Tuesday in the EAA Museum, provided a free day at AirVenture for about 150 teachers from around the country, […]

Despite the ongoing silliness of a Transportation Security Administration that continues to treat general aviation pilots as if they were criminals, it’s been a pretty good summer here at the virtual airport. People are learning to fly, a couple new pilots have purchased airplanes and hangared them here, and we’ve enjoyed the conversations that ensue […]

As the snow piles up around the windows at the virtual airport and some of the resident airplanes grow funny appendages on their landing gear, I always ponder the fact that many pilots will spend a pile of money to put their feet into skis but few ever explore flying airplanes with skis attached. That’s […]