Risk Management

Tyson Weihs, co-founder and CEO of ForeFlight, has announced the release of version 5.6 of ForeFlights intelligent app for pilots. Highlights of the update include enhanced flight plan filing options-including ICAO flight plan form support-as well as complete worldwide coverage for military pilots. Significantly, ForeFlight now primarily files flight plans directly via the modernized Lockheed […]

Aviation lore is full of heroes like Chuck Yeager, who saved the day while calmly muttering on the radio something about some little fire going in them engines or such. The quiet, unflappable, laid-back flyer has been the role model for young pilots since the days of the Lone Eagle. But, is there such a […]

The stick-and-rudder component of flying airplanes, while challenge enough, is the lesser difficulty compared to learning to makedecisions that wont kill you or at least rend metal. Teaching it or learning this has everything to do with recognizing risk and hazards for what they are and preparing accordingly. In fairness, I think most pilots do […]

AOPA is reporting that a group of senators has introduced a bill that would require the FAA to follow rulemaking procedures before it could adopt its much-maligned new standard for expensive sleep apnea testing for pilots. The Senate bill, introduced by members of the bipartisan General Aviation Caucus, Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., […]

On Jan. 16 the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) issued its annual Most Wanted list of needed improvements in transportation safety. The aviation-related items are a need to identify and communicate hazardous weather conditions to pilots, address the unique characteristics of helicopter operations, strengthen occupant protection, improve fire safety and eliminate pilot distractions. At a […]

With all the literal and figurative bells and whistles in todays cockpits, something as mundane as losing communications with ATC is rare. One reason is the stuff we have in the panel these days is a couple of light years ahead of even two decades ago in reliability. But loss of communications-going no radio, or […]

Two pilots and two passengers on a Citation died Sunday when the aircraft apparently hit an electric tower in heavy fog while trying to land at a German airport. Local authorities say all four were German but no identities were released. When emergency crews arrived they found the plane inverted near a landfill and in […]

A few days ago, we emerged from a polar vortex that drifted south – a textbook example of what those things do from time to time. The associated cold managed to get the media into full cry and revived all of the how cold is it? jokes. Judging from Internet aviation forums, it also got […]

Remember the movie, Wall-E, a Pixar animated tale whose subtext was that technology eventually evolved to be so all enveloping that humans were reduced to quivering mounds of fat conveyed in bins attached to a mechanical belt? If that future awaits us all, are airline pilots leading the way? In the midst of its investigation […]

It used to be self-fueling just referred to the aircraft owner who brought mogas to her airplane in five-gallon cans and upset the airport manager or FBO because of lost fuel sales. While thats still the case, over the last decade, its also come to mean putting avgas into your airplane from a self-service pump. […]