Proficiency

One of the concerns many pilots express about doing their flight planning on a tablet computer is that they don’t spend time with a chart and a plotter looking over a route. They end up starting a flight with less situational awareness about airports where they can bail out if something goes wrong en route. […]

The instrument rating is probably the most challenging step-up in aviation—and this is coming from an ATP with a couple of jet type ratings. With the rating in your pocket, how can you make flying easier and more satisfying? How to stay proficient? Chances are your CFII started you out with most of the following […]

There are three ways to arrive at an airport when operating under IFR: a standard instrument approach procedure (IAP), a visual approach and a contact approach. A great way to bring hangar flying to a screeching halt is to ask about a contact approach. A lot of IFR pilots know that it is some sort […]

If you’re doing it right, and everything works as advertised, that takeoff you just made eventually must be followed by a landing. While takeoffs pose their own challenges, landings can be problematic for many pilots. You might have a problem with airspeed, or with when and how to flare. You might have a problem with […]

Every pilot has the message drummed into him or her that if it suddenly goes quiet, they must“aviate, navigate, communicate” and “fly the airplane.” A Taiwanese pilot of a two-seat aircraft epitomized those qualities during a recent off-airport landing that was naturally captured from start to finish by his passenger’s cellphone. Many of the shots […]

It seemed innocuous enough—an email from Nathan Richards, Ph.D., a reader of our sister publication, IFR magazine, asking if someone would be interested in flying a Learjet in-flight simulator as part of a project his employer, Barron Associates, was doing on upset recovery. I wasn’t sure what an in-flight simulator was, but I’ve been very […]

I like the Black Knight scene in the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The Black Knight is getting beat in a sword fight by King Arthur and losing one limb after the other. He won’t admit he might be in over his head, instead he tells King Arthur, “Tis but a flesh wound.” […]

In its March 2017 issue, our sister publication Aviation Consumer ran an article with guidance on the interesting challenges of buying and owning antique and classic airplanes—and will be following it up in the next few months with a similar piece on warbirds. We have been watching the process of old airplanes changing hands and […]

I recently had a beautiful IMC flight on which I relearned how wonderful our capability to operate in the IMC world is. It’s easy to lose that awe for the beauty of our environment and the utility of the machines at our disposal as we move safely through this environment. Such is the stuff of […]

In many conversations with instrument instructors, I’ve noted a common concern about the way many pilots conclude practice precision approaches (ILS or GPS LPV) under the “hood”: They do a great job of keeping the needles near the center as decision altitude nears; airspeed, descent rate and heading all would be appropriate. But when the […]