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?”

Friday Photo: Colombian rainbow

"Sometimes the combination of mountains and tropical weather brings you the opportunity to witness beautiful views, even when you are on long final," says Santiago Arbelaez. That's certainly true of this beautiful Friday Photo, which shows a rainbow just under the wing of his Cessna 185.
Grand Canyon

The first time I ever saw the Grand Canyon

Our four fighters, in arrowhead formation, skimmed the desert floor for another hundred miles or so until the sandy brown horizon turned to a brilliant blue in the waters behind Glen Canyon Dam. We were going to fly the Grand Canyon from Lake Powell to Boulder Dam. We would not fly over the Canyon; we would fly in it.
logbooks

The logbook: a generational connection

I opened up a Christmas present from my parents. It was a flat white box, approximately the dimensions of a regular sheet of paper and about an inch tall. Then I removed another layer of the paper and noticed that there were two logbooks in there, one of which had a pretty banged up spine. A possibility suddenly came to mind—could it be?
LTFH

An intro flight and shattered dreams

We started the engine, talked on the radio, and a few minutes later we taxied and sped up along the runway. Just then, the kid who wouldn’t stop asking technical questions went silent; the only noise out of him was his breathing over the headset. He turned pale and wiped his permanent smile off of his face. He leaned his head back and after a while could just mumble.
Mountains

Preparing for the trip of a lifetime to Alaska

There is a lot of preparation for any long cross-country journey, but this trip had two elements that I hadn’t had to include in any of my trips before. These are the specific items needed for flying from the US through Canada, and the preparations for survival, in case of a forced landing, potentially hundreds of miles from the nearest town or road, across a largely uninhabited and often rugged wilderness.

Friday Photo: sunrise over the St. John’s River

George Currie took this photo of sunrise over the St. John's River and Jacksonville, Florida, looking east toward the Atlantic Ocean, from his 1977 Piper Cherokee Warrior II. His mission was to start the day early with some socially distanced fun and adventure, before this typically crowded airspace gets busy.
182

Bam!

I performed a pre-flight on our Cessna 182 and all was well. Linda arrived, we loaded the groceries into the back seat and launched on an IFR plan to Page. We left Chino, California, at about 2 pm. Just as we pulled out of the LA Basin and leveled off at 10,000 feet, configured the mixture and prop and set the autopilot, BAM! I lost a cylinder.
Aeronca finished

Civilian Pilot Training in a pre-war Aeronca Chief

Initially, I was uncertain about acquiring another airplane. I had owned a Cessna 172 until financial circumstances forced me to give it up. But my spouse stated that I “needed a project” to get my mind off the challenges at work. So, in fall 2009, I committed without realizing how much time and effort would be required to restore an old Aeronca.
Muncho Lake

An Alaska Highway flight gone wrong

George was one of my most ardent fans. A pilot, we’d often rent planes and fly formation around Southern Alaska. We would take friends along and have some glorious times together. Over the months we dreamed of one day being able to fly the Alaska Highway. What an adventure that would be.
Collins

Ten years of Air Facts

Ten years is a long time on the internet, so the fact that Air Facts has survived is an achievement, but it’s done much more than that—it has thrived, and grown into its own bustling community. In fact, it has succeeded beyond my wildest dreams, with over 1 million visitors last year from all around the world. Even more satisfying are the 1,900 articles we have published since 2011, written by 760 different writers.