Pilot Stories
Enjoy pilot stories? Our Pilot Talk section is full of informative and entertaining flying tales from accomplished pilot authors.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009 Logging Time In The World’s Largest Airliner
Left seat in an Airbus 380
 I’m sitting in the pilot’s seat of an Airbus A380 surrounded by 10 flat-panel displays and more switches than I can describe. It’s the world’s largest airliner, and its size is staggering. |
Tuesday, March 10, 2009 Survivable Ditchings
US Airways Flight 1549 is reminiscent of other successful ditchings
 Without diminishing in any way the heroic actions of the pilots, flight attendants and passengers on US Airways Flight 1549, which was successfully ditched in the Hudson River after a bird strike on January 15, it’s important to note that most ditchings actually have a high survival rate. |
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Tuesday, March 10, 2009 From the Editor: A Diamond For A Pilot’s Pilot
 There were more than a few cheers at this year’s U.S. Sport Aviation Expo in Sebring, Fla., which drew a record crowd of up to 11,500 attendees and held its own in spite of the current economic woes. With more than 165 exhibitors and sales of at least 20 airplanes, it’s evident that the LSA industry has come a long way since the sport pilot rule was created four years ago.
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Tuesday, March 10, 2009 53 Years Later
Pitfalls over the Rockies
 I’m 77 and hold a commercial pilot license and an instrument rating. I’ve filled four logbooks. As a child, I made balsa-wood and tissue-paper airplanes. As a teen, I made gas U-Control model airplanes, and I used to ride my bike to the airport regularly. During the Korean War, I served in the Air Force. All in all, I guess that I’m an aviation enthusiast. |
Tuesday, March 10, 2009 Personal Aviation At A Crossroads
Looking back and moving forward
 Five years ago, the first special light-sport aircraft (S-LSA) received its airworthiness certificate, opening up a new chapter in the regulation of simple personal flight. More than 1,000 of these factory-built aircraft and more than 8,000 former ultralights (experimental light-sport aircraft, E-LSA) are now flying under the sport pilot and LSA category. |
Tuesday, February 24, 2009 Return To Goose Bay
There’s nothing so constant as change. Trouble is, change is hard to come by in the far north.
 When I returned to Goose Bay, Labrador, Canada, in early December to complete the delivery of the world’s brightest Marchetti (yellow and red with blue stars, formerly owned by an air show pilot), I was hoping it was cold enough that ice season was pretty much over. It was, but not without a few dying gasps.
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Tuesday, February 24, 2009 The Solitary Goose
Not everyone wants to fly solo
 The morning sun had yet to break over the horizon, and as I speed-walked my usual early morning, let’s-get-the-blood-flowing-and-the-joints-loose route, I could actually see my breath. Light frost crusted the yards—a rare but not unknown happening here in the desert. Then I heard a single honk overhead and glanced up: Instantly, I felt just a little melancholy.
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Tuesday, February 24, 2009 Profiles In Vision: Tom Peghiny
The #1 LSA distributor in America climbs for the blue on how to survive “The Econogeddon”
 I like employing people and making things,” Tom Peghiny, president and founder of Flight Design USA, told me on a snowy winter day last January. |
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Tuesday, February 10, 2009 Icing Awareness
The quantity and quality of information have improved, but icing is ever a deadly foe
 Ten years ago, the National Aviation Weather Program Council met in Washington, D.C., to develop ideas that could be turned into practical steps toward reducing the number of weather-related aircraft accidents. Regarding in-flight icing, the group—which included FAA, Department of Defense, NASA, Department of Commerce, Department of Agriculture and NTSB representatives—concluded that better observation systems were needed for detecting icing, and weather forecasts should present icing hazards in clear, easily understood formats.
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Tuesday, February 10, 2009 From The Editor: From Dream To Reality
We all started at the same place: the beginning.
 There was a time when aviation seemed to be a distant world, out of my reach. I didn’t know any pilots, and as far as I knew, you had to be in the military or have millions of dollars to become one. While my classmates forged ahead on paths to become doctors and lawyers, I stumbled around, sneaking peeks at airplanes passing overhead and memorizing the aviation alphabet. But, one day, everything changed.
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