Technique

Most pilots are content do drone along in the straight-and-level, rarely banking beyond 30 degrees or pitching up and down beyond 10. Meanwhile, aerobatic pilots enthuse in their ability to fly upside down, vertically and in all combinations. Somewhere in the middle of these two extremes are what the FAA calls “performance maneuvers,” generally thought […]

Aeronautical decision-making (ADM) is essentially the mental process of gathering and evaluating information pertinent to a flight; listing the options and their attendant risks; and then choosing the best alternatives. It is an iterative process due to the nature of the changing variables inherent in flight. ADM is often a relatively simple and subliminal process […]

It’s not often that a bad case of high winds aloft puts you on the beach for the day. But not often is not the same as never.

Donating your time to fly for a charitable organization (more commonly known as public benefit flying) is, in my opinion, the most personally rewarding flying a pilot can do. It offers a chance for a pilot to combine a passion for flight with helping others. Public benefit flying is most commonly known for medical transport—flying […]

Good judgment and quick thinking are hallmarks of the aviation mentality. Both pilots and air traffic controllers are in the decision-making business. For controllers, every moment our headsets are plugged in, we’re making choices that affect the safety and flow of traffic in our airspace. Some choices are easier than others, such as not clearing […]

(Editor’s note: In the last 20 years the development, deployment and proliferation of Single-Engine Air Tankers (SEAT), nimble fire fighting airplanes converted from the biggest turbine crop dusters, has caused significant changes in the way forest fires are fought. While not able to carry as much fire retardant as the multi-engine tankers, they are faster […]

As simple and straight forward as the visual approach, is sometimes you might end up wishing you were in the soup to minimums. The visual approach has a few traps waiting to grab you. It is important to remember the visual approach is not an instrument approach even though you are still on an IFR […]

In his influential book, Stick and Rudder, Wolfgang Langewiesche states the rudder “. . . causes the greatest difficulty for beginners,” and “. . . even the more experienced pilot often has trouble using it correctly.” Commenting on improper rudder use as a contributing factor in accidents, he states, “In the typical fatal accident, which […]

AVweb’s General Aviation Accident Bulletin is taken from the pages of our sister publication, Aviation Safety magazine and is published twice a month. All the reports listed here are preliminary and include only initial factual findings about crashes. You can learn more about the final probable cause in the NTSB’s web site at www.ntsb.org. Final […]

Compared to landing, taking off is relatively simple. Our instructor lets us make the first takeoff of our very first flying lesson—or at least makes us think we made the takeoff. If everything goes right, it’s easy. But how do you know everything is going right? And how do you know what to do in […]