Flight Safety

First of all, congratulations on getting down safely. What was that last200 feet like? We were about a hundred and fifty feet from touchdown and to have a landinggear come through your windshield and the windshield come flying into your lapis kind of a strange sensation. The airplane on top didn’t really push us downthat […]

01/13/1982 16:01 LOCATION: Washington, DCCARRIER: Air FloridaFLIGHT: 90AIRCRAFT: B-737-222REGISTRY: N62AFABOARD: 79FATAL: 74GROUND: 4DETAILS: Crashed shortly after takeoff into the Potomac River and sank. Failure to turn on engine anti-icing system. Crew inexperience in icing conditions. Cockpit Voice Recorder Transcript Air Florida flight 90 – DCA-FLL Boeing 737-222 N62AF 71 (75) + 4 CAM-1 Captain’s Cockpit […]

Inwriting this article, I am reminded of the often-used patter by younginstructors in which the student is told to keep an eye on the enginetemperatures and pressures during the takeoff. The reality is that oil andcylinder head temperatures are slow to indicate trouble, while oil pressureneedles can flicker and vary by small amounts depending on […]

Aletter from a reader who had an unpleasant experience at a non-towered airportprompted this column. He wrote the following account: I was recently making a straight-in final to a non-towered airport. Monitoring the Unicom frequency, I was aware of another airplane in the pattern flying touch-and-goes with a student. Since I was approaching from the […]

Eleanor Watterud Wagner was born November29, 1914, in Glasgow, Mont. Growing up in North Dakota, she and her brother spent much oftheir spare time at local airports and began a scrapbook of aviation photos and newsclips. When Eleanor was 14, the family moved from the midwest to Long Beach, Calif. Therethey found a mecca for […]

I suspect Cap’n Jepp is rolling in hisgrave over the latest Briefing Bulletin – Vertical Navigation (VNAV), dated 12 NOV 99 -from Jeppesen in Denver. Not that it’s Jeppesen’s fault; they’re just charting the latestindustry foolishness. But Captain E. B. Jeppesen was an airman of the old school, and Ibelieve he would have rejected VNAV […]

Ifirst became acquainted with pulse oximeters the hard way — in a hospital Emergency Rooma few years ago. My wife and I were in the midst of a brief mini-vacation in theCalifornia High Sierras when I fell ill. After I spent a horrible sleepless night in thehotel, feeling nauseous and dizzy, my wife made a […]

Tomost of us who fly, aviation is as important as breathing. Or, at least it seems that way.We take our flying very seriously, and spend countless hours receiving ground and flightinstruction, and reading every book and magazine article and accident report we can getour hands on, trying to learn everything we can to make us […]

Little John, Lady J Adapter Brief Relief #1 Travel John Recommendation Little John, Lady J Adapter Brief Relief #1 Travel John Recommendation Little John, Lady J Adapter Brief Relief #1 Travel John Recommendation Onceupon a time, there was an entrepreneur-pilot — let’s call him Herb — who, after decadesof flying lesser aircraft, decided that it […]

Manypilots dream of strapping on a $45 million F-15E Screaming Eagle fighter, but few get todo it. I had the honor of doing so November 12, 1999, and learned a lot about what ittakes to support these jet jockeys — both their aircraft and their lives. Click on any image below for a higher-resolution version. […]