Flight Safety

The instrument rating checkride was the next morning. I wasready. N8236N was washed and polished and oiled and fueled and I had the logbooksthoroughly analyzed. There were bookmarks (these were the olden days, kids, we didn’t havesticky notes) to note the location of all required inspections and ADs. The static systemand altimeter had been freshly […]

Last month, I passed along some cold-weather operatingtechniques put together by the denizens of the pilot’s lounge here at our virtual airport.In the process, I mentioned the father of cold weather flying, Bernt Balchen, and said I’dtell you a little more about him this month. In the interim, I’ve also received somefeedback on cold weather […]

Pitch to Altitudeand Power to Airspeed?… or Power to Altitude and Pitch to Airspeed? Several years ago, a pilot examiner of my acquaintance would askhis private applicants one question and one question only during the oral portion of aflight test. The question was, “Which control makes the airplane go up?” If theapplicant answered, “The throttle […]

NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION SAFETY BOARDPublic Meeting of January 26, 1999(Subject to Editing) Aircraft Accident involving John DenverIn Flight Collision with Terrain/WaterOctober 12, 1997Pacific Ocean near Pacific Grove, CALAX-98-FA008 Probable Cause | Safety Recommendations EXECUTIVE SUMMARY On October 12, 1997, about 1728 Pacific daylight time, an experimental category, amateur-built Adrian Davis Long-EZ airplane, N555JD, crashed into the […]

Can’t breathe welder’soxygen? Aw, horsefeathers, as my dad used to say! Show me the rule! Oxygen is oxygen. It is the substance that matters, not the intended purpose. Thesedays, welding, medical, and aviation oxygen are exactly the same. All three come from thesame tank of liquid oxygen (LOX). The liquified form is the cleanest, purest, […]

It had been a very good winter day. About adozen of us stuck around here in the pilot’s lounge after the sun went down, even thoughsnow was falling and a blizzard was forecast. We were getting warm after dealing with thechallenges of working with little airplanes in cold weather and talking about our daysand, of […]

I, too, was surprised to read in the Oregonian article on the 20-year reunion of thecrash of UA173 that faulty fuel gauges were attributed to the crash. That is the firsttime I had heard about that. I was one of the Portland International FAA Air TrafficControllers on duty that fateful evening. I was working arrival […]

NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION SAFETY BOARDWASHINGTON, D.C. 20594 AIRCRAFT ACCIDENT REPORT Adopted: June 7, 1979 UNITED AIRLINES, INC.McDONNELL-DOUGLAS DC-8-61, N8082UPORTLAND, OREGON DECEMBER 28, 1978 SYNOPSIS About 1815 Pacific standard time on December 28, 1978, United Airlines, Inc., Flight173 crashed into a wooded, populated area of suburban Portland, Oregon, during an approachto the Portland International Airport. The aircraft […]

This column was promptedby a recent enote from AVweb reader Marc Sabransky, who wrote me to ask about theapparent trend throughout the aviation community (and particularly the FAA) towardencouraging every certificated airplane pilot to get an IRA (Instrument Rating-Airplane).He posed the question: “Should every pilot be instrument-rated?” My answer isn’t just “No” but “Oh, Hell […]

The author in a moment of self-assessment following his first taildragger lesson in the Citabria. We tricycle-gear drivers don’t know jack about flying. Tricycle gear makes nearly every landing a greaser. (Well, if you’ve ever seen one ofmine, we’ll call every landing “survivable.”) And, once we’ve learned to fly, wenever much worry “whence the wind.” […]