Flight Safety

Once again it’s time for me to take a trip down the road to unpopularity and write an article about a subject we’d rather not talk about. I never have been able to leave well enough alone. It’s probably the reason I don’t get invited to dinner more often than I do. I like to […]

I’m pleased to announce that — after decades of prodding — I have written a book. It is a compendium of some of my writings on Compuserve’s AVSIG Forum for well over 20 years, some of the AVweb tales in my columns, and others, old and new (see sidebar to the right).There is a second […]

I don’t know how many times the subject of the conversations in the Pilot’s Lounge here at the virtual airport have lingered on issues of aircraft maintenance. If there is one thing that concerns a pilot nearly as much as flying weather or the cost of flying, it is the mechanical condition of the aircraft […]

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 […]