Our pilot training articles are designed to help you improve your flying proficiency. Bone up on beneficial skills as well as the biggest mistakes to avoid as a pilot. Fly right with articles on topics such as dealing with ice and the most dangerous things you can do as a pilot.
What happens when you get caught doing something illegal, unsafe or just plain dumb?
Learn why or why not, you would need both GPS and DME in your plane for approaches.
Subscribe today to Plane & Pilot magazine for industry news, reviews and much more delivered straight to you! Land being the valuable commodity that it is, it’s becoming more and more difficult to find an airport offering a choice of runway directions—other than the two alternate ends of a single strip of pavement. And so, more more »
Subscribe today to Plane & Pilot magazine for industry news, reviews and much more delivered straight to you! My home is located on a public use airport in a Colorado mountain valley at an elevation of 8,300 feet. When I step out my front door, I can count seven peaks within seven miles that top 14,000 more »
Are you an aviation enthusiast or pilot? Sign up for our newsletter, full of tips, reviews and more! Not too long ago, there wasn’t much hiring going on at the airlines. Many pilots interested in airline jobs took flight instructing positions and kept them for a while, building hours well beyond the 1,500 hours total time more »
Are you an aviation enthusiast or pilot? Sign up for our newsletter, full of tips, reviews and much more! Flight reviews come to all of us every couple of years, if not supplanted by an equally rigorous evaluation and training requirement. Under Federal Aviation Regulation 61.56(c), no person may act as pilot in command unless a more »
Are you an aviation enthusiast or pilot? Sign up for our newsletter, full of tips, reviews and more! It’s a given that air traffic controllers like to talk. I mean, why else would we have chosen this career? I like to talk, and to my credit, most pilots hear what I say. But the question is, more »
Are you an aviation enthusiast or pilot? Sign up for our newsletter, full of tips, reviews and more! Even though they might be technically correct, when an NTSB report cites loss of control as the cause of a crash, it’s really not much help. It’s only slightly more informative than saying that colliding with terrain was more »
Are you an aviation enthusiast or pilot? Sign up for our newsletter, full of tips, reviews and much more! “Descend and maintain” is such a staple of IFR communications, it might as well be a single word. Yet there are times when that’s the last thing you want to do. Maybe those clouds are bumpy, and more »
Subscribe today to Plane & Pilot magazine for industry news, reviews and much more! Like most pilots, my first few lessons in pursuit of a Private Pilot Certificate were memorable. I wish I could report that this was because of the exhilaration of sailing into the wild blue yonder or cavorting among the clouds. With apologies more »
Instrument pilots have a thing for regulatory minutia. An information morsel you’ll often hear repeated is “being able to descend to 100 feet AGL when you can see only the approach lights.” That’s too bad, because it belittles a beautiful piece of information design by turning it into a gouge for aviation trivia night. It’s more »
From airfactsjournal.com. Disruption is a hot topic these days, but the 16th century had plenty of it, too. In the span of a generation, the printing press (and the Protestant Reformation) fundamentally changed the way many Christians practiced their religion. Instead of listening to a priest interpret the Bible, the average churchgoer could read it more »
It was one of those days, a long one, replete with delays and crabby passengers and thunderstorms. After 12 hours on duty, five legs, and three different airplanes, my crew welcomed the approach of the jetway at the Huntsville International Airport like a marathon runner rejoices at the sight of the banner. On such days, more »
Back in the day, vertical guidance on final approach was reserved for the Cadillac approaches, which almost always meant an ILS. Airports whose tax base or FAA grant status didn’t cut it were stuck with non-precision approaches. Without vertical guidance, we’d cross a fix and step down to the next altitude, fix after fix, until more »
“Sometimes, you find yourself in the middle of nowhere, and, sometimes, in the middle of nowhere you find yourself.” — Author Unknown Running parallel to and between two sharp turns in the Deschutes River—deep in a narrow canyon—Bull Run is barely discernable as a landing strip. The tan summer grass blends into the reddish beige more »
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On an introductory flight, the gray-haired man who would eventually become my CFI, Paul, coached me through gentle turns on the western banks of the Chesapeake Bay and assured me that if he could learn to fly, anybody could. He was jovial and enthusiastic about everything the flying life had to offer. All that stood more »
I’m paranoid about emergencies on IFR departures. Maybe it’s because I’ve had four attitude indicator (AI) failures in flight, twice in IMC. One of those was even a certified primary flight display (PFD) from a major manufacturer, so don’t assume glass panels are immune. Indulge me in the retelling of one of those to illustrate more »