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We watched the accident unfold before us from the tall grass, 9,000 feet up in the jagged crest of the Sierra Nevadas.
The assignment was simple—fly over to Lubbock, Texas, spend three days with the U.S. Air Force (USAF) basic training squadron at Reese Air Force Base (AFB).
Everyone reading these words has flown with a lot of other pilots.
Cylinder-head temp gauges are creeping noticeably toward the red lines. Not good. No, this isn’t looking good at all.
I was tired. No, beyond tired. I was fairly well-whipped. There are no legal limits imposed on flight hours associated with ferry flying, and stupidly.
It’s ironic that most general aviation pilots consider a possible engine failure as their greatest fear.
I listened carefully to the clearance on the first go-around, shook my head in exasperation, and wondered if the controller had been a trumpet player in a previous life.
It barely matters what you fly these days— avgas is starting to comprise a greater percentage of an airplane’s total operating cost.
From two miles up, big water looks pretty much the same all over the world.
What makes some runways more challenging than others? The length? The wind? What you had for breakfast that morning? What?
It seems we all have a story, some event in our lives that brought us into the aviation trade.
What are the best conditions for landing uphill/downwind or downhill/upwind? It may seem dangerous to land into the wind but downslope on a snowy runway; yet landing upslope with a tailwind seems equally precarious.
Bill Stewart, until recently a lapsed pilot, sounds like something between a fighter jock and a kid in a candy store as he recounts his latest aerial exploits on the ramp at Chicago’s Aurora Municipal Airport (ARR).
The sheer enormity of the subject is a little intimidating. You probably could name several thousand characteristics of a “good pilot.”
It was 1984, and I was ferrying one of the last of the Cessna 207s to South America. It was a midsummer afternoon in South Texas, and the mushroom cumuli were climbing high into the stratosphere all along the border and south toward the Gulf of Mexico.
VFR corridors have served an important function in U.S. airspace since the creation of the old TCAs (Terminal Control Areas) and TRSAs (Terminal Radar Service Areas), now less telegraphically renamed Class B and Class C airspace, respectively.
Formation flying is a dangerous and, for me, compellingly beautiful and engaging experience.
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I spent over a year making the transition from piloting a TBM 700 turboprop to becoming a jet pilot; a process that has taken me through an ATP rating, two type ratings, a lot of simulator time, a jet trip to Paris, a bit of mentoring, one or two scary moments, some frustration and piles of cash