Risk Management

Beyond separating and sequencing aircraft, air traffic controllers are responsible for managing expectations. When I’m working traffic, I must ensure that what each pilot expects to be doing matches with what I expect him to be doing. Otherwise, it’s like trying to act out a play when all the actors are reading from different scripts. […]

Each month, we chronicle recent accidents we hope are of interest to readers. A glance at a random month’s entries likely would reveal that a substantial portion of them involve total or partial failure of a piston single’s engine. Yes, there’s selection bias involved—we typically try to highlight the most educational accidents and incidents, and […]

Strong thunderstorms are one of the places aviation and fear often intersect. And for good reason: severe storms have led to countless disasters, perhaps the most famous one being the Delta L-1011 crash at DFW Airport in 1985. That tragedy brought far-reaching consequences to flight training programs and ATC equipment, and led to advances in […]

If you’re like me, one of the reasons you started flying was to go places. It’s not at all uncommon for the student pilot pounding around the pattern with an instructor to ask for a respite every now and then, perhaps a jaunt to a nearby airport, at the very least for a change of […]

It’s not unheard of to think thunderstorms are only a product of summer weather. Certainly they are more common in warmer months, but wintertime “thundersnows” are common enough that I’ve seen a few. The point is that we can encounter thunderstorms any time of year, not just in the summertime. These days, it’s easy for […]

Now that we’re staring at the weather picture from the depths of winter, perhaps you’ve been re-acquainted with how fronts make an impact on the weather. Fronts truly form one of the building blocks of meteorology. In the Air Force forecasting school I attended years ago, fronts were the very first topic that followed the […]

Everything we do in life carries risk. An undesired outcome often is influenced by factors we can’t control—someone running a stop sign, for example, or a perfectly good engine deciding to fail. But many other risks of a specific activity can be anticipated. It’s why we wear a helmet when riding a bicycle, or earn […]

Icing affects flight operations in many ways. Accordingly, we offer some thought-provoking reports from pilots who’ve been there. Little has been said about instrument malfunctions due to icing, and we discuss those in particular. Chilly Carburetors An instrument-rated Commercial pilot operating VFR experienced a sudden power interruption in his Cessna 150, followed by a surge […]

I basically live at an airport, and taxi to and from the airpark’s runway over what are residential streets the rest of the time. My normal taxi route includes a stand of bamboo, decades-old oak trees, mailboxes, a power pole and assorted fences. Tuesday is trash-collection day, and it can be a deal if your […]

Part 91 gives us lots of discretion when it comes to choosing an approach, deciding if it’s legal (and safe) to continue, and then if it’s legal and safe to land. The caveat is that personal judgment, often in the heat of the moment, becomes the catchall for critical phases of flight. This makes us […]