November 12, 2019

New Features In Sporty’s Learn to Fly, Instrument Courses

The all-HD content is better than ever, and there are new wrinkles to maximize your chances of success.

With the launch of its 2020 video courses for new pilots and for those seeking an instrument rating, Sporty’s has answered the question we’ve asked ourselves so many times before: What more could they possibly do to make these courses better? The answer, once again is, “Plenty.” The courses sell for $249 each, and while more »

October 17, 2019

The Many Paths To Becoming An Airline Pilot

There are multiple ways to get your airline transport pilot wings. Consider them all.

Why would anyone want to become an airline pilot? It’s a great question. There are many ways to be involved in aviation, but the short answer for me is that it’s a great career. It is, in fact, a job I still enjoy doing 27 years later at Brand X Airlines. Even with the challenges more »

April 12, 2019

Home Schooling

Many airlines are using an alternate method that approaches recurrent flight training from a real-world perspective. Here’s why it works.

Just ahead, the windshield separated a cold, murky night from my relatively comfortable perch in the flight deck of the Airbus. As the runway lights in Boston flashed past faster and faster, I scanned the instruments while the captain, who was flying the plane this leg, had his eyes outside. “Eighty knots. Power set,” I more »

January 31, 2019

Plane Facts: The World of Pilot Training

Flight training has come a long way over the years and accomplished some remarkable feats in training the millions of pilots who've strapped in and taken to the air over the past 115 years.

Flight training has come a long way over the years and accomplished some remarkable feats in training the millions of pilots who’ve strapped in and taken to the air over the past 115 years.

August 14, 2017

Redbird GIFT

Redbird’s virtual CFI comes alive

When I first heard about Redbird’s Guided Independent Flight Training (GIFT), I was curious. So many recent advances in transportation technology have been moving us toward increased automation and computer-driven decision making. That has its good points and its bad ones, but how does that trend extend to teaching someone to fly? GIFT—a series of more »

August 16, 2016

Simulating A Revolution

New-gen devices rock transition and recurrency training.

We had departed Runway 34 at Westchester County Airport (HPN) for a cruise down the Hudson and were abeam midtown Manhattan at 3,500 feet when the Piper Mirage’s Lycoming TIO-540-AE2A began sputtering and the prop froze upright in the windscreen. In the right seat, Bill Inglis, with more time in these cockpits than just about more »

July 11, 2016

The First Three Minutes

Lots can go wrong on takeoff and initial climb. Here’s how to prevent that from happening.

In some respects, takeoffs can’t get no respect. It seems there are a myriad of mistakes pilots can make on departures, and studies show that nearly one of every five general aviation accidents are directly, or indirectly, related to a poor decision or omission during takeoff. Yet, pilots rarely practice aborted takeoffs, preferring instead to more »

March 5, 2016

Simulation Comes Of Age

Simcom introduces a King Air 200 simulator with a difference

One of the quickest ways to identify an older airplane is to look at the panel.

March 1, 2016

CFI An Adventure In Learning To Teach

What it’s like to become a CFI through AFIT’s accelerated program

Probably the greatest responsibility in aviation is training new pilots.

March 1, 2016

When To Cry Uncle

There’s a time to bluff, a time to run and a time to ask for help

I was three hours out of Reykjavik, Iceland, on my way to Wick, Scotland, when I sensed, rather than heard, the engine begin to spool down.

January 23, 2016

From Empty Nester To Private Pilot

Flight training for the not so young

When I took my first flight lesson back in June 2003 at the age of 48, I was exactly twice the age of my flight instructor and a lot older than almost all of the other students. For the first time in a long while, I’ve been back in flight school lately to work on more »

September 2, 2015

Climb Away

Climb sometimes suffers as the forgotten mode of flight

You could do it that way, and thousands of pilots operate with exactly those simplified procedures every day. As you might have expected, however, there are better ways.

August 28, 2015

Power Failure

Modern Aircraft Engines Almost Never Quit…Almost

Losing an engine on a single-engine airplane is one of the scariest possibilities in aviation.

July 21, 2015

Go-Arounds: The Sooner, The Better

The cardinal rule of go-arounds: Don’t wait too long

Easygoing Gary Meermans, at the time chief pilot for United Airlines, smiled from the right seat as I taxied out at Long Beach for my second hour of multi-engine training in one of the world’s most tired Piper Apaches.

May 26, 2015

Is The Compass Dead? Is Technology Now King?

GPS units are excellent primary navaids, but that doesn’t mean we should abandon our old-fashioned whiskey compass

Without meaning to, the majority of the population of the industrialized world (and much of the rest) has become wildly dependent on personal technology.

May 26, 2015

No Pilot, No Worries

Unmanned aerial vehicles (“drones”) have become aviation’s next big thing

Drones are everywhere. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are the most talked about segment of the aviation industry, and not a day goes by without something in the news about drones.

May 12, 2015

Get A Free Type Rating

If you have time and patience, CAE’s supporting crewmember program will earn you a dream rating

Let’s be honest: What aviator wouldn’t jump at the opportunity for a free ATP rating and a free type rating from one of the premier advanced training flight schools in the world—if that was an option? It is.