Flight Safety

Barbara Erickson London was bornJuly 1, 1920, in Seattle, Wash. Halfway through college she enrolled in theCivilian Pilot Training program. She was a natural pilot and workedquickly through her commercial and instructor’s ratings. She stayed at theschool and trained other CPT and Naval Transport Service students. In 1942, with the war in fullswing, she joined […]

Wepreviously discussed the subject of flying by “sight picture” asopposed to “flying by the numbers.” Now we will undertake to considerall the sensory cues that a pilot uses in manipulating the controls of anairplane and making the machine do what he or she wants it to do (or, at leastkeeping it from doing that which […]

It’s a cold November Friday evening. I amstanding in the baggage area after deplaning a Boeing 737 at Denver’s InternationalAirport. Could it be that I can actually learn the basics of flying Boeing’s most prolificjet in just two days? I am asking myself why I had abandoned my wife, pregnant with our soon to arrive […]

Itwas a grubby day outside the Pilot’s Lounge here at the virtual airport. The VFRstudents had been scrubbed but a few of the IFR students were out flying withtheir instructors getting some actual experience in the clag. Most of theregulars were inside, sitting in the big easy chairs because someone had dug upa portable television […]

Charles Edward McGee was bornDecember 7, 1919, in Cleveland, Ohio. His mother died giving birth to his sisterwhen he was about a year old. On his 22nd birthday Japan attacked Pearl Harbor,and WWII soon interrupted his studies at the University of Illinois. McGee wassworn into the enlisted reserve on October 26, 1942, and entered Army […]

Flight training has been consistently running 10 to20 years behind the state of the art. A prime example of this is the way I wastrained in the early 1940s. Aircraft engines produced back in the early 1930s(and before) were so undependable that every time one took off you could toss acoin as to whether or […]

Oxygen generators are improperly placed in a forwardcargo compartment. A fire starts, and the airplane is destroyed. No one waskilled when this happened to an American Trans Air DC-10 on the ground inChicago in 1986, but the lesson went unlearned. Ten years later, oxygengenerators fueled the fire that led to the ValuJet Flight 592 crash […]

Check out AVweb’s “Airmanship” section, where Paul offersan article about deadly spiralsthat could save your life. Paul A. Soderlind was born August6, 1923, in Billings, Mont. He took his first flight lesson at age 12, earnedhis private certificate on his 18th birthday (which was then the CAA minimumage), and earned his Commercial and Instructor ratings […]

First,a little housekeeping. For those interested in some of the old books I reprint,there have been several changes. Be sure to check out my list of availablepublications. Also, I am often asked “When are you gonna do the the turbocolumn?” I’ve now got a turbonormalizer from TornadoAlley Turbo in Ada, Oklahoma, and as soon as […]

Itis only May, but here in the Pilot’s Lounge at the virtual airport, a few of thepilots are already making plans to go to Oshkosh, Wis., to the annual EAAAirVenture blowout the end of July. Some are checking out their camping gear andperusing Sport Aviation magazine to see what is going on and when they […]