Flight Safety

Buzzing and hot-dogging are the leading spin scenarios, often by highly qualified pilots who ought to know better. As Pat Veillette recently reported in Aviation Safety, the solution may not be more spin training, but more training in good judgement. This article appears in the May 2002 edition of Aviation Safety and is reprinted here […]

It had been one of those lovely, late fall mornings. You got up, looked out the window at a nearly clear sky and decided to fly the 70 miles to visit an old friend for coffee. The forecast said nothing below 4000 feet and four miles vis, so off you paddled. Coffee consumed, you shot […]

Familiarity can breed confusion when a procedure that you have flown before has been revised and you don’t brief for the approach. Even in a single-pilot situation, an approach briefing will ensure you have everything set up properly. Recently in IFR Refresher, Brian Jacobson followed the chain of events that led to an accident during […]

I was sitting in one of the big chairs here in the pilot’s lounge at the virtual airport when I read that the president, on June 6, 2002, had signed an executive order dictating that air traffic control is no longer an inherently federal function. That act was a significant procedural step toward imposition of […]

Wally Roberts was born October 22,1936 in Pasadena, Calif., close enough to the Monrovia airport to see airplanesin the pattern. Around age 12, he watched a PT-13 auger in after stalling at thetop of a loop, killing the pilot and his girlfriend. For a while after that hehad a phobia about airplanes, but when that […]

Having flown family and friends and done a substantial amount of on-demand passenger charter flying in singles and light twins, carrying all kinds of people (from babes-in-arms – to old folks who had to be assisted into the airplane – to invalids) over an aviation career that has spanned more than half a century, I […]

Someone, somehow, some way, goofed, and I was recently invited to join that small group of pilots in the Commemorative Air Force (CAF) who regularly fly the world’s only remaining flyable B-29. I think they mistook me for someone else, but I’m not asking any questions! Ground school took place in Midland, Texas, last year, […]

FROM: Col. R. L. Sohn – CAF, Chief Check Pilot – Bombers TO: Tina Stewart – Editor Dispatch, 15 Jan 94 Dear Tina, I just received the Winter issue of the Dispatch, the publicationlooks better each issue. Sometime I should show you some of the CAF stuff I’vesaved going back to 1965 if you don’t […]

Welcome back aviation fans. Your friendly safety rep here, Mr. Sunshine. I’m pleased to report to you that all is well and everything is coming up roses. Everyone on both sides of the mic has heeded my advice and we are all using perfect phraseology. Controllers are sticking to all the procedures and the pilots […]

Here in the pilots lounge at the virtual airport a few of us are muttering darkly about May’s flying weather. It comes after a winter for wimps, so mild that the lakes never froze hard enough for skiplane operations. It says right here in the contract that we’re supposed to have a cold winter with […]