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Cleared Into the Thoma Bravo—ForeFlight Has New Owners

ForeFlight is still considered the EFB standard with a very loyal user base—it’s their market share to lose. However, I also don’t think their future is entirely CAVOK either: In the 25-plus years I’ve been in the software business, I have never met a private equity deal I liked. Mainly because private equity’s primary (only?) focus is maximizing ROI, usually at the expense of innovation, while with traditional corporate ownership it tends to be the other way around.

April 30, 2025 /21 Comments/by

Know Thy EFB

Your EFB is only as good as the data it uses. Consequently, it’s absolutely imperative that before you jump into the cockpit with your trusty mount, fully set up your EFB. And that’s more than just waiting for it to automatically download the latest weather and charts.

April 11, 2025 /6 Comments/by

Why Crash Videos and Social Media Don’t Mix

I get that we all speculate in private on crashes since we have a natural tendency to try to understand tragedy after it unfolds. But when we speak publicly on social media or even to our friends and family at home, we become ambassadors for aviation. And as ambassadors, I firmly believe we need to steer these conversations toward supporting our fellow pilots who were involved in the incident as well as understanding how we can prevent it from happening again. And any online content that goes against these tenets should be strictly avoided or even better, unsubscribed.

March 3, 2025 /36 Comments/by

Checking The Checklist Checks

Checklist usage shouldn’t feel like a chore, nor should it feel mandatory (and from a regulatory standpoint, it isn’t), but rather an act of habit. And the quality of checklists you use is directly responsible for how often you use them! Because once checklist usage feels natural instead of premediated, you don’t have to think about it anymore.

February 19, 2025 /11 Comments/by

Do Crash Videos Make Us Safer Pilots?

Do you really need a YouTube expert to remind you of the dangers of flying into known icing conditions? How about thunderstorms? Flying at night over mountainous terrain in hard IMC? Yeah, I didn’t think so. In fact, if you read the comments section of a lot of these videos (please don’t read the comments section), you’ll find that there are more non-pilots than real ones. They either found the video out of morbid curiosity, or they just got lost (hey, it happens).

December 16, 2024 /74 Comments/by

The Fine Art of the Debrief

Like many of you, my debrief has evolved over my flying career. Now, what I like to do is organize my thoughts into, “The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly,” or more formally, what I did well, what I thought I could do better, and what I might have done differently. And not necessarily in that order depending on how the flight went.

November 13, 2024 /4 Comments/by

The Flying Sport

What’s not obvious to a lot of non-pilot folk is that flying is one of the few passions you absolutely must do regularly just to safely do it. Think about that for a second:  unlike other modes of transportation, you can stop driving for several months, even years, and still be able to get back into a vehicle with little to no training. Flying isn’t like that.

October 16, 2024 /6 Comments/by

Cruise Checklist, Complete?

Monitoring your engine gauges is sort of a systems-level skill which is part of every primary curriculum. But most of the focus is on takeoff; hopefully, you’ve been taught to stare at the gauges when you line up on the runway in case you must abort because one of them doesn’t look right. Yet just because your engine is acting normally on takeoff doesn’t guarantee it will in flight, right?

August 14, 2024 /11 Comments/by

It’s Time To Get High

And what altitude did I fly the entire coast of Connecticut? That’s right, 1,500 feet. It gets better. Because for whatever reason, New York Approach wouldn’t negotiate with Bridgeport’s Tower (KBDR) for the transition, I was asked to avoid KBDR’s Class Delta airspace altogether. And I did. At, you guessed it, 1,500 feet. Over the water. Go me.

May 27, 2024 /4 Comments/by

The “C” in PIC

When I first started my primary training, my CFI was mainly focused on developing my “P-Skills”–learning to actually fly the airplane. But once I got the physical act of flying down, my training slowly transitioned into developing my “C” ones. These skills included recognizing and dealing with emergencies, how to communicate on the radio effectively, and probably the most important one of all, how to see and avoid.

May 13, 2024 /2 Comments/by

The Zen of IFR

How 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.

March 29, 2024 /10 Comments/by

It’s Not That Complex

Most of my checkout once airborne was more about me getting a feel of how the Arrow stalls, turns – all the usual primary stuff. However, we did cover various emergencies related to the gear. All went well. In fact, by the time we headed back from the practice area, I was feeling a lot more confident in my airmanship – until I had to land that is.

February 5, 2024 /11 Comments/by