Flight Safety

Just as vices tend to become habits, the Pilot’s Lounge again made its annual odyssey from the pleasant confines of the virtual airport to the EAA Convention at Oshkosh this year. The regulars camped together and did their best to keep things stirred up. Jay and Doc Walt did a formation arrival in their Beech […]

“You should write a book,” said Jenny, our senior flight attendant for today, who was standing behind the center console of our airplane.She was no doubt referring to the fact that so far today not much had gone right and we could fill at least a romance-novel-sized tome about our trials and tribulations up to […]

Did you ever notice it’s always the little things that jump up and bite you? We all worry and obsess about the big things. We know not to fly into thunderstorms. We know to stay away from icing. There’s nothing wrong with focusing on the big things. It’s made aviation one of the safest forms […]

I‘ve just had the rare opportunity to fly this very rare and remarkable warbird, and I’m just busting out all over to tell all. I am still amazed that I got the chance, and it appears that I’ll get to fly it on a continuing basis. To my knowledge, there are only two flying in […]

The majority of all aircraft accidents are attributed to pilot error. Most accidents occurred because of a chain of events or factors that contributed to the accident. If any one of these events in the chain had been broken or stopped it is likely that the accident could have been avoided. Break the chain, prevent […]

Over the last few years the news we hear in the Pilot’s Lounge, here at the virtual airport, has tended to be pretty grim. With Chicago’s Mayor Terrorist destroying Meigs, TFRs and airspace restrictions as rampant as mushrooms in a damp cellar and airline managers doing their level best to bankrupt their charges while competing […]

This article appeared in the December 2001 edition of Aviation Consumer and is reprinted here by permission. Like the speed of light and the freezing point of water, one of the constants in the universe is this imponderable question: Is a twin safer than a single? Does having two motors really add measurably to the […]

Three guys are in the cockpit for today’s flight from Los Angeles to the beautiful splendor of Newark, N.J. Normally, having a jump seat rider in the cockpit for such a long flight is a huge pain in the butt. Today, it’s not so bad because the seat is filled with the butt of Jeff, […]

Updated August 24, 2003, with information on new PLBs from Pains Wessex. I was ferrying my antique open-cockpit biplane — a rare Flaglor High Tow — from my home base in Driggs, Idaho (just west of Jackson Hole) to the maintenance shop at Idaho Falls. That’s about 45 nautical miles, which doesn’t sound like much […]

This article originally appeared in the July 2002 issue of IFR Magazine and is reprinted here by permission. Mnemonics, such as GUMP or CIGAR, are popular in aviation, although one of the most useful when approaching a terminal area might be hard to relate to: WCRR, or West Coast Rail Road. The only relationship between […]