Uncategorized

Airline and charter pilots may be in for more stick and rudder time assuming a new proposed advisory circular makes it through the 30-day comment period. The FAA has issued a draft of the AC on Flightpath Management and it includes a host of measures the agency wants operators to include in training and operations […]

In what turned out to be a miraculous ending to a really bad day, LAPD officers pulled an injured pilot from a crashed Cessna 172 moments before it was struck and destroyed by a commuter train. Mark Jenkins, the 70-year-old pilot, was pulled from the wreckage of the aircraft after he crash landed on railroad […]

Occasionally an aviation event jumps up to bite the oblivious pilot on the buttocks without warning. For example—and stop me if you’ve heard this—a seemingly healthy pilot of advancing age (you decide) walks into a medical office for a flight physical only to encounter the dreaded AME phrase, “Hmmm …” Felt upbeat entering the exam […]

Every student pilot (and no, I am not going to call you a “learner”) is familiar with the forced landing exercise. The airplane is out in the practice area and the instructor pulls the throttle to idle and tells you the engine just failed. You then frantically look around for a field to land in, […]

I have a love/hate relationship with the month of October. I love the even-year Octobers because those are the ones I don’t have to drudge through a Flight Instructor Refresher Course—the dreaded FIRC. But this is an odd year, so I’ve just completed an online eFIRC and I’m feeling, once again, that I’ve expended a […]

Presidential speechwriters have a term called “reaching for the marble.” When you understand that it refers to the pithy text on the friezes of the nation’s iconic monuments, the connotation is so clear that I needn’t waste pixels listing the qualifying words. This being an aviation blog, I’ll segue straight into the aviation version of […]

Veterans Day comes on Thursday, so I am early with my remembrance of this day and what it means. For me, it will be just another work day and one that’s out of the office covering an aviation event. That suits me because with each passing year, I have more difficulty corralling my sentiments about […]

Without apologizing for being an old muser, I wonder how many passengers wheeling luggage through New York’s JFK could identify the airport’s namesake. Those unable to decode the initials shouldn’t be allowed to board anything but a tram to LaGuardia (LGA). I can understand not knowing Fiorello LaGuardia, the Colossus whose name languishes athwart one […]