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Air Facts was first published in 1938 by Leighton Collins, dedicated to “the development of private air transportation.” It’s a different world now, and it’s a different Air Facts. Relaunched in 2011 as an online journal, Air Facts still champions, educates, informs and entertains pilots worldwide with real-world flying experiences. More…
Warp speed: birth of an aileron
HistoryInstead of shifting its weight to right itself, as every bird-watching, would-be aeronaut assumed their winged subjects did, the buzzards flexed one wingtip up and the opposite down. Could there be a more unlikely, less romantic bird to bestow the gift of flight upon humanity?
The risky moments: when decisions go bad
Dick's blogEveryone who writes about aviation safety eventually comes around to the subject of risk management. The FAA wants CFIs to teach it using checklists, which is hardly realistic. The simple truth is that risk management can be done only through a deal the pilot makes with self.
Knowing your true airspeed for fuel management
TechniqueI have a healthy fear of running out of fuel and I do everything I can to be sure there is fuel left in the tank when I land. One of the best improvements I made had nothing to do with the airplane at all, but instead was a cheat sheet for quickly finding True Airspeed to trim the airplane and to determine engine fuel flow.
Go or no go – en route decision
Go or No GoRichard Collins has famously said there's really no such thing as a single go/no go decision. Rather, weather flying can be seen as a series of "continue flying or land short" decisions. Tonight is a perfect example. After a long weekend with friends in Hilton Head, SC (HXD), you're headed home to suburban Atlanta (RYY).
Thoughts on training vs. education
Opinion“You train for things you know are going to happen. You educate for the things you can’t anticipate.” Most of us use the term “train” to mean everything we pay for in order to get a license or rating. But the reality is that the respective approaches to training and educating are very different.
John’s Blog
What a difference a decade makes: the GA boom in statistics
John's blogGeneral aviation is growing. That simple statement would have been unremarkable to a pilot in the 1960s or 1970s, as surprising as saying the sun rose in the east that day. But for anyone who learned to fly after about 1990, and especially between 2008 and 2016, it’s a shocking thing to admit. Yet that is exactly what is happening right now, as data from a wide variety of sources show.
What matters for IFR proficiency? The answer is quite simple.
John's blogAssuming you are busy and have to make hard choices about what to focus on, I think there’s a strong case to be made for spending your precious flying time on basic attitude instrument skills. Flying approaches to minimums or practicing emergencies may be more fun, but those procedures are not where pilots make the most fatal mistakes.
Pilots need to be generalists, not specialists
John's blogAmerican education has been obsessed with STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Math) for at least a decade, and the aviation industry has eagerly jumped on the bandwagon. The FAA is leading the charge to fit our square peg into this round hole, declaring aviation to be the ultimate STEM career path. I’m in favor of anything that attracts a new generation of pilots, but this framing is a radical oversimplification—and it sets up some pilots for failure.
I Can’t Believe I Did That
Quick land to Quicksand
I Can't Believe I Did ThatThe landing went smoothly. As I taxied the Cub toward where I wanted to park, we hit a patch of quicksand that I hadn’t spotted from the air. Within the blink of an eye, the bushwheels sank, bringing the plane to an abrupt stop and sending its propeller into the sand and tail into the air.
Lessons learned from a sloppy IFR/VFR approach
I Can't Believe I Did ThatLowering the Mooney’s nose for descent enabled me to finally see the runway. However, when my bird’s nose is lowered, she is so slippery I accelerate quickly at the very time I need to be slowing. I intercepted the approach course and then flew through it.
Watch out for TFRs
I Can't Believe I Did ThatSuddenly, my peripheral vision picked up something to my left and the serenity of the morning was shattered. A Black Hawk helicopter was a few feet off my wing! As I stared at it in disbelief, the door slid open and a soldier in fatigues held up a large 121.5 sign. My shaking fingers stabbed at the radio 'emerg' button and I managed a feeble “hello?
Opinion
Rubber bands – the reason I quit
OpinionMy landings were getting worse and worse. Probably depth perception changes, but extremely frustrating. I was mentoring two young people who were vitally interested in flying by letting them fly from the right seat. How embarrassing that I couldn’t score a 9 or 10 on each landing. As we know, landing is a combination of hand/eye coordination and muscle memory. One of those was slipping away.
The Zen of IFR
OpinionHow can an average GA pilot like me who flies around a hundred hours a year stay proficient? The answer is quite simple (well, maybe): I incorporate some aspect of IFR flying into every single flight. Every single one. That means hand flying to within or better ACS standards.
Diversity: The Double-Edged Sword of General Aviation
OpinionIt turns out that there is no legal requirement for the instructor to be familiar with the avionics being presented for the IPC. Beyond flight time in the make and model of aircraft flown, it's entirely up to you, the pilot, to be able to manipulate the panel to accomplish the tasks required to complete the flight(s).
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Did you know that most of the articles at Air Facts are written by readers like you? You do not have to be Richard Collins or Ernest Gann – simply a GA pilot with a story you’d share with friends sitting in the hangar.