Flight Training

Maintaining your IFR currency isn’t that hard. Just fly and log in actual or simulated conditions six instrument approaches, “holding procedures and tasks” and “intercepting and tracking” electronic courses within the preceding six months, and you’re golden. Even if you find yourself slightly out of currency in the 11th month, you can go out with […]

Of all the major components of a conventional airplane, the tail—empennage, if you prefer—may be the least understood. Yes, we generally know it’s there to help balance and stabilize the airplane’s attitude in flight, and to help control yaw and pitch, but that’s often the extent to which we paid attention in ground school. If […]

Six pilots, the latest graduates of Able Flight’s training program, will receive their wings during a ceremony July 21 at EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh. This year’s class includes a pilot who was born without hands or feet, two who are quadriplegics, one who is a paraplegic, a deaf pilot and a wounded veteran. From mid-May […]

Airshow season is at its height and hundreds of thousands of people are flocking to watch some of the coolest airplanes on the planet being flown by some of the finest pilots around. At the same time, summer weather means the backcountry airstrips are open and pilots with a certain lust for adventure are taking […]

During my long and colorless career as a flight instructor, I’ve been asked a few times to pencil whip a flight review. This I have never done and still would not do, although I am surprised to admit my reasons for not doing so have changed. I never believed that FAR 61.56’s requirement for a […]

The FAA last week published a notice of proposed rulemaking that would increase to 20 hours the simulator time allowed for the instrument rating, following an earlier attempt using a straight-to-final rule process that was derailed when two commenters objected to the change. The new proposal states that the FAA aims to “relieve burdens on […]

Four students are at the Glasair factory in Arlington, Washington, this week helping to build a Sportsman, as their reward for winning the third GAMA/Build A Plane Design Challenge. The Chef Homeschoolers team from Cuba City, Wisconsin, won the trip in a nationwide competition that aims to develop their skills in science, math, engineering and […]

If ever we need a king in this country and someone put me in charge, somewhere on my to-do list would be getting rid of FAR 91.119. OK, so I wouldn’t eliminate it, but I’d amend it so that people would just worry about it less. I’ve been in more discussions than I care to […]

Mark Vanhoenacker, author of the new book Skyfaring, shares a story familiar to many aviators — as a kid growing up in the hills of western Massachusetts, he was fascinated with airplanes, but unsure how to pursue or afford an aviation career. So he got sidetracked — until he ended up flying a 747 for […]

When Mark Vanhoenacker was growing up in Massachusetts, being an airline pilot seemed like an impossible dream — “like wanting to be an astronaut,” he says — but today he flies all over the world in the front seat of a British Airways 747. How he made that journey, and what the experience is like, […]