Flight Safety

This article originally appeared in Aviation Safety, Jun. 2005. When the spring and summer flying season returns in a few months, many general aviation pilots will realize they haven’t flown much during the winter. As a result, they usually have lost some of the skills honed during the previous year’s flying season.Up to a point, […]

Dubya had done us a favor this holiday season and officially made all of the Military Operations Areas “cold” during Thanksgiving weekend. What a guy; the MOAs are normally shutdown during holidays anyway, but a political point is a political point.Because of resting military flight crews and a generous (albeit disingenuous) president, we actually arrived […]

This article originally appeared in IFR Refresher, Jan. 2007. When a pilot contemplates an IFR flight, the focus will tend to shift towards the latter part of the trip. This is reasonable, as an approach is arguably the most challenging phase of any IFR flight.This focus on approaches, enforced during initial and recurrent training, does […]

My first flight instructor introduced me to the touch and go: power off, flare, flare, flare, “chirp” go the mains, hold the nose (“If the nose touches, it’s not a touch and go,” he said), flaps up, power up, carb heat in, adjust the trim in there somewhere, and up we go. The touch and […]

Nominate an FBO |Rules |Tips |Questions |Winning FBOs AVweb‘s “FBO of the Week” ribbon goes to Specialty Flight Training at KBDU in Boulder, Colorado. AVweb reader David W. Douglas praises the Specialty Flight team for stepping up to the plate when he arrived late on a Friday afternoon: I … needed to hanger my Cirrus […]

Nominate an FBO |Rules |Tips |Questions |Winning FBOs AVweb‘s “FBO of the Week” ribbon goes to Montgomery County Aviation at KLOM’s Wings Field in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. AVweb reader Brett Justus recommended the FBO, telling us that “‘Brotherly Service’ is abundant at this FBO”: I received exceptional service all the way around. Most notably, though, I […]

Overhead, the massive, wide-chord blades begin rotating. Behind me the whine of the turbine builds as Walt Plentis goes through the start sequence and the 1800 horses of the Lycoming T53 collectively ask if we know what we’re doing, if we really want to wake them up to power a two-place aircraft. Walt assures them […]

This article originally appeared in Aviation Safety, Oct. 2005. Having the talent and skill to fly an airplane pretty much when and where we want doesn’t mean we should. Any number of factors may, from time to time, argue against making a trip or completing one. Weather, terrain, mechanical shortcomings, time of day and/or some […]

Nominate an FBO |Rules |Tips |Questions |Winning FBOs AVweb‘s “FBO of the Week” ribbon goes to Monaco Air at Duluth International Airport (KDLH) in Duluth, Minnesota. AVweb reader Armand Bendersky recommended the FBO for its friendliness and careful preparations, calling Monaco “a first-class operation with first-class folks”: [W]hen I told Holly were we were staying, […]

[Editor’s Note: Recently two flight instructors wrote a book on how to use Microsoft Flight Simulator X (FSX) to enhance pilot training and to provide sim-only pilots a guide to making their flying more realistic. AVweb is reprinting several chapters from this book, the first of which was Chapter 13 — Weather. To download the […]