Flight Safety

The pilot lounge at our crew base is just like every other one in the airline universe: some preschool-type art tables with folding chairs and walls covered with cork bulletin boards, which in turn are covered with the flotsam and jetsam of pilot life. There is the usual large screen television showing either the usual […]

I had a incident the other night that really bothered me, so (of course) I started looking for a way to work it into a column. When I see something like this incident, I’m ashamed to admit my first reaction is usually somewhat uncharitable. The thought pops into my head that some people are just […]

I think I’m seeing the rapid growth of yet another OWT (Old Wives’ Tale). Some pilots are going to extraordinary lengths to prevent this badly misunderstood phenomenon, and a few are creating far more danger for themselves and their airplanes as they try to avoid a problem that probably doesn’t exist.I believe the Commemorative Air […]

I was sitting in the pilot’s lounge at the virtual airport, quietly minding my own business and practicing new hand gestures in case I had to go to Brazil, when Mark — one of the local pilots –caromed off the door frame and boomed into the lounge trailed by scraps of yellow paper emitted from […]

A mechanic and his supervisors have been cleared of any wrongdoing over maladjusted elevator cables suspected of playing a role in the crash of a US Airways Express Beech 1900 on Jan. 8, 2003. All 21 people aboard the commuter flight, operated for the airline by Air Midwest, died when it climbed sharply after takeoff, […]

I was in a tent and it was raining, but at least it was warm. Standing behind a plywood podium in a “forum tent” at a recent Florida Fly-In, I had been invited to give a little talk to the experimental airplane crowd on what airline flying was really like.I was more than a little […]

The whole point of getting an IFR ticket is (of course) to be able to go somewhere when the weather is less than VFR. So why don’t we do that? Let’s take a trip.Let’s say you want to fly from HKY (Hickory, N.C.), pick up your buddy at MRN (Morganton, N.C.), and then head for […]

Let’s take a few pot shots at some of the more common errors in the seemingly simple procedures of starting an engine and doing the runup, and also cover some new techniques with engine monitors. I’ve written a little about some of these procedures elsewhere, but I’ve never pulled all of them together. For Starters […]

Just recently, one of the regulars here at the pilot’s lounge of the virtual airport, Ed Williams, who in the real world is a plasma physicist, took a break in studying for the ATP written, stopped by and showed us one of the published questions on that written. It said: “Who should be advised if […]

When I sat down with the Designated Pilot Examiner and handed him my logbook, it was pretty light: only three pages of entries, totaling 42.3 hours; just barely above the minimum. Of those 42 hours, 15.5 were PIC/solo, 5.3 solo cross-country, 3.0 dual simulated instrument, and 3.8 dual night. I expected the Examiner to comment […]