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Pilots on reserve are used to the phone ringing constantly. They’re the pinch hitters and relief pitchers of the airline world. I was signing in for my trip when the company called. It wasn’t scheduling explaining that my trip had changed—it was my chief pilot calling from his office a few yards away. “Let me more »
No one is surprised when the NTSB declares that the probable cause of a midair collision is the failure of one or both of the pilots to see and avoid the other aircraft. The statement is used so often that it has become an aviation safety cliché. In its recent report on the collision of more »
As in other parts of life, in flying we count on numbers, infinite streams of digits, or more to the point these days, ones and zeroes, describing what we do in the physical world, and in the operational one, too. With due deference to poets and screenwriters, aerodynamicists explain how we fly not in terms more »
As I stood in front of 15 excited and anxious student pilots in the first meeting of my private pilot ground school class last fall, I started to lose their attention as I kicked off a discussion on navigation tips, tools and techniques. The majority of them didn’t have one hour of flight instruction in more »
After decades of thinking about flight, in late June 2003, I finally took my first lesson. It was a great move that has gone on to take my family and me to places I expected and places I never dreamed of. The timing, though, could hardly have turned out worse. My career, which had always more »
Cessna 180 Skywagon 1 Fatal The private pilot was conducting a personal cross-country flight in instrument meteorological conditions. The airplane wasn’t certificated for flight into icing. A review of radar data and radio communications recordings revealed that, after an air traffic controller issued the pilot a descent from 10,000 to 8,000 ft. msl, the pilot more »
There are a lot of reasons why I love to fly, but the one that’s the foundation of them all is freedom. In airplanes, as in dreams, I rise above the mountains and the mundane. I can see over the trees. I’m in charge and in control of my destination, my destiny. The world becomes more »
Pilatus PC12 1 Uninjured The operator reported that during the takeoff roll, at the moment of rotation during night visual conditions, the pilot observed two white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) running across the runway. The pilot maneuvered the airplane to avoid the deer, however, one of the deer impacted the nosewheel. The pilot decided to continue more »
Tonight, I fly in my own sensory deprivation chamber, a semi-anechoic capsule seemingly isolated from reality. The sun rolled down beneath the Earth hours ago, leaving me in a blackness well beyond merely dark. It seems there’s no outside light above or below, forward or aft, left or right. I’m suspended in an obsidian void more »
It sounds like the setup to a bad aviation joke: What do an F-16 and a Cirrus have in common? Let me think: One shoots and the other chutes? Except, in this case, the real punch line isn’t funny. It’s tragic. The answer is that, in both cases, a leading cause of fatalities is controlled more »
Not too long ago, I was completing a pre-flight walkaround of a Boeing 747 at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas. On a dusty and windy winter night, it was easy to imagine what I couldn’t see at that late hour—the deserts and mountains beyond the city, stretching off in all directions, the great Western more »
Through life and career, we undoubtedly pick up mentors, heroes and role models. Everyday life is a challenge, leaving us wondering how to act, and we have to rely on others to show the way—overtly as you might expect from a coach or inadvertently when we like a character on TV or meet someone whose more »
In March 2011, after seven years of flying, I felt on top of my game like never before. With about 600 total hours and 100 in my current aircraft, I had made it past the days of self-doubt. Since earning my instrument rating a year earlier, I also had begun flying extensive, coast-to-coast business trips—accumulating more »
Three thousand feet above the North Dakota prairie, on a warm, clear-sky morning, Mike Paulson gets a smile on his face. “Check this out,” he says. Mike takes his feet off the rudder pedals and puts the airplane into a bank to the left. Almost immediately, the nose squirrels hard to the right. “Adverse yaw,” more »
I’ve done it. You’ve probably done it, too: allowed an unqualified individual to manipulate the airplane’s controls. Usually, it’s a child or first-time-flying adult. I strictly limited them to a few gentle turns or push-pulls of the control yoke. But, I’ve heard tales of passengers handling the throttle, setting transponder codes, operating the flaps, even more »
Ever forget? Me, too—in fact, frequently. It’s probably not improving with age, either. Already this week I’ve forgotten to set out the trash, pick up the dry cleaning and a couple of other things I’m too embarrassed to admit (hopefully, my daughter forgives me). Every day, we overlook a variety of little things, because forgetting more »
Founder of EAA airshow: EAA Founder Paul Poberezny Location of first EAA airshow: Milwaukee Timmerman Field Name of umbrella airshow that year: Milwaukee Air Pageant Number of airplanes, 1953: Around 40 (EAA says it was a “handful” of mostly homebuilt or modified models) Number of airshow attendees: Approximately 150 Year of first EAA airshow: 1953 more »
I was almost 16 when I started flying lessons in a J-3, thinking—but not even close to knowing—where this would lead. And so began an airborne journey, a journey with destinations at once geographical and intangible. At first, flying, to me, was so concrete, apparent, so kinetic, a skill to be learned, practiced and perfected, more »