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This article’s title would’ve been killer material in the third grade, and since pilots never grow up, let’s consider what is barely whispered in polite aviation society: Slips. Forward or side, the terms are casually interchanged while illustrating uncoordinated maneuvers with ambiguous hand gestures that compound uncertainty. So, after decades of teaching them, I’m determined […]

Every year in the U.S., there are between 200 and 250 fatal aircraft crashes totaling about 400 or so deaths. Four to six a week. These numbers are so predictable and so utterly ordinary that we rarely cover them on AVweb. Not to be too cynical about it, but fatal accidents are the unfortunate normal […]

The recent Kobe Bryant accident in low-visibility conditions and the many others like it always elicit comments similar to, “What is a helicopter doing flying in IFR weather like that?” The short answer is because they can. Flippant, but true. By and large, fixed-wing aircraft are stable platforms. Trim them up, release the controls, and they […]

The hurling of metaphorical spitballs being part of the job description, opinion writers can’t resist comparisons. Here’s a topical one: Which is bolder, Elon Musk’s proposal to launch humans to Mars or Apollo 8? It’s an easy answer and I picked 8 not 11 for a reason. SpaceX’s high-altitude tests of its Starship Mars rocket […]

The promise of a guilt-free flying machine in every pot seems to be, if not on hold, at least in the waiting room skimming back issues of Aviation Consumer while hoping for a callback. Might be a long wait. Still, I’m optimistic, and as Ludditely-inclined as I am, I would love to fly an electric […]

I don’t know about you, but I’m not in the mood. And I get less in the mood every day. The mood I feel slipping away is the slightest tolerance for passengers who misbehave on commercial airline flights. Misbehave is too generous. More like act like complete, flaming ^%$#@&. You’ll certainly know I’m referring to […]

I found him standing in mud up to his shins, cussing out loud, the inglorious result of walking backward into a soggy tobacco field to get just the right angle for a shot. We had both arrived at a country intersection, the scene of a car accident. I was a volunteer for our local rescue […]

Apollo-era astronaut Mike Collins was famously one of the most erudite and poetic humans to participate in the bold act of lunar exploration. His book, “Carrying the Fire,” ranks as the best personal account of the great adventure and was recently reissued in a 50th anniversary edition. Having considered the thing thoughtfully for five decades, […]

Air traffic control offers a smorgasbord of mostly legal ways to run the scud without running from the law. We’ll consider four procedures that blend IFR with VFR to expand system utility. They are: Visual approach, contact approach, VFR-on-top (OTP), and special VFR (SVFR). That last sounds like an item on the Airport Cafe menu: […]

As I was sitting through the NTSB probable cause hearing on the Kobe Bryant crash last Tuesday—all four hours of it—I felt like I was watching “A Few Good Men” for the 39th time. It’s on every other night on my cable system. I know what’s going to happen, but I still like watching Jack […]