Wing view

Friday photo: a freight pilot’s view

You sit in one position in one chair for over three hours. You stare at electro-mechanical needles and dials for those same three+ hours, eyes darting from one to another quickly because you have no autopilot. Occasionally, you turn your head away from your only links to survival, your instruments, and consider with much respect your wings and engines.
Cosentino

My first combat mission in an F-4 Phantom

We both listened carefully to the excited and concerned voices of the Marines and their forward air controllers pinned down on the ground in the city as they tried to talk me to the right building. The target was a small building in the middle of a city of small buildings. We both knew that the target was impossible to identify from the air.
FAR/AIM

The best regulations

Of all the many fascinating aspects about aviation, a very underrated one is regulation. Yes, you read it right, I have a profound respect for the rules that govern our activity. Of course there is always room for improvement, but the whole shape they have nowadays and how they have been perfected through time, is a testament of how good the concept was in the first place.
DA42

A gear problem?

And now, I had them both—a plane and all the ratings that go with it. And, of course 400 hours or so, which made me that "great" pilot. And so it was time to take it all to the test. I took two friends and off we flew to Geneva, Switzerland, a breeze of 1.5 hrs with the DA42. The mission: to attend the yearly car show, of course!
Windsock

Peer pressure among pilots

I watched a crew wrestle their jet down the runway and taxi into the FBO where I was parked. After the passengers disappeared I asked the captain about the approach. He laughed and said he probably should have diverted. As he walked away I decided I would delay our departure.

Friday Photo: Miami Beach

I just received my private pilot certificate in Michigan in November. I checked out a plane on a much needed break at a Miami airport in December and planned a day trip to Key West for lunch, following the road all the way. Cruise ships were parked at sea but the view and thrill of piloting your own airplane was beautifully amazing!
Sunset

Three minutes before the fan turns off

This is a story on how, at 10 minutes after midnight and after 5 hours of flight time, in an unfamiliar airplane, over a highway, I gambled my life and an airplane against a very tempted fate and scythe-wielding death and won the whole pot.
Medical X

An FAA medical story with a happy ending

One sunny afternoon in mid-June I grabbed a letter out of my mailbox. The return address sent a shiver down my spine: FAA Office of Aerospace Medicine in Oklahoma City, OK. I had no particular reason for concern, as I had a valid 3rd class medical which had just been renewed the previous September. Also, I have a practical joker friend who might pull off this exact stunt…

Go or no go: how bad is the turbulence?

Over the last 10 years, you've gotten to know your Mooney 201 quite well, using it to travel around the central United States at 160 knots. You're hoping to do that again today, on a flight from your home in Wichita, Kansas (ICT), to Amarillo, Texas (AMA). Read the weather reports below and tell us if it's a go or a no go for you.
Crosswind landing airliner

Landings at the crosswind limit

We’ve all seen this movie before on countless videos of airline pilots attempting to land in extreme crosswinds. More often than not, the amateur videographer captures the jet touching down in a significant crab angle to the runway, tires smoking, and the airplane nose pivoting back toward the runway centerline. How is it possible to land in such extreme conditions?

Friday Photo: landing at 9000 feet

The airstrip at Jomsom is 9000 feet AMSL, situated in the midwest part of Nepal and north of the Mt. Annapurna and Mt. Dhaulagiri ranges. Later I flew many times between 25,000 and 30,000 feet on photography flights and search mission over Mount Everest and Mount Kanchanjunga.
747

The mystery of a very heavy 747

Normally, the nose strut should extend, followed by the nose gear breaking ground. The nose should rise, as checked on the attitude indicator. So what was going on here? The line was tight but it felt like a snag. The nose wasn’t coming up. Of course, this was happening very fast. Too fast to say more than, “Nose is heavy.” Way past the point of stopping.
Joby

What if flying cars are just a bad idea?

Billions of dollars have been invested in flying car startups over the past decade, and if the press releases are to be believed, tilt-rotor aircraft will soon be a reality in American cities. But I’m increasingly convinced that Americans don’t actually want a flying car in the first place. Maybe the problem isn’t the technology, but the product-market fit, to use the popular venture capital term.
Pathfinder

Orders from heaven

Once upon a very, very long time ago, the Salt Lake City Police Department decided to experiment with using an ultralight aircraft for patrol work. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect some police officer who was also an ultralight pilot found a creative way to have some fun and get paid for it.
Reading chart

Are pilots still navigating?

I was giving a flight review the other day and in the words of Claude Rains (Casablanca), I was shocked, positively shocked that the pilot I was flying with had virtually no knowledge of basic navigation. With the technology available today, I probably should not have been that surprised, but after working in aviation safety for many years, I have a concern.

Friday Photo: Archer sunrise

Fred Pond was flying his Piper Archer, picking up 16 cases of PPE equipment in Indiana and taking it to Pennsylvania as a Compassion Flight for LifeLine Pilots and Angel Flight, when he snapped this beautiful photo. As he says, "I am thankful for the opportunity to belong to a group like LifeLine Pilots. General aviation plays a huge role in disaster relief around the world."
Chinook landing

Helicopter rescue on Mount Rainier

It all started with a pounding on the front door at 5:00 AM. We were living in a house inside Mount Rainier National Park. I was directing youth programs in the park and at the time coordinating helicopter support from the US Army Reserve 92nd “Hooker” squadron out of the Seattle area in Washington State. For the better part of the summer, we had access to 10 or more of the very big, twin-rotor CH-47 Chinook helicopters to fly materials and supplies into the back country for our youth projects.
Rockies

Grayout at 17,000 feet

On Monday, August 13, 2012, I came as close to dying in an airplane as I ever want to. Accidents typically don’t stem from one cause or event. There is usually a series or chain of events that occur where if even one of the links were broken, disaster might have been averted. My case was no different. Looking back on it, I was lucky in spite of a series of events and decisions that contributed to my situation and could have ended very badly.

An American pilot flies a Chinese-owned Citation through Russia

It was January in Siberia and the sun was in the process of dropping below the horizon while I was about to intercept the localizer to a localizer only approach. The Chinese-registered CJ1 technically had three crew, me in the left seat, a Chinese pilot from the company that owned the plane in the right seat, and a Russian translator who was kneeling between the pilot seats.
Sitting in Cub

The wrong stuff

Three miles later we were at the Chickamauga Lake and my initial assessment of the day was correct: it was perfect. The water was packed with boaters. We flew by her house and did a “wing wave” to her friends on their boat enjoying a holiday outing. Then came the enviable question when flying a seaplane near water: “Can we land?”