The piston twin became a victim of our culture’s relentless pursuit of efficiency. The second engine, just like elevator operators and flight engineers, didn’t provide the necessary return on investment. But I think the piston twin is worth mourning, because for all the practicality of a high performance single, something is missing with the new generation of transportation machines.
Have you heard about NextGen? It’s the FAA’s plan for a Next Generation Air Transportation System, and it’s going to save pilots money, protect the environment, improve safety and generally solve all the world’s problems. There’s just one problem with this rosy forecast–no one has any idea what NextGen means.
You can’t read a story about general aviation these days without being confronted with Apple’s world-beating tablet computer. Some pilots are skeptical that the iPad really changes anything. Most gush about it and how flying will never be the same. What’s the real story? And what is it really good for?
A relatively new instrument pilot asked me recently how to open a flight plan via Flight Service. After stammering for a moment, it hit me: I haven’t called Flight Service in over 5 years.
Two recent trips reinforced for me both the potential and the limitations of using general aviation airplanes for transportation. In many ways, they could not have been more different: the first flight was in a Pilatus PC-12 at 26,000 ft., the second in a Citabria at 500 ft. But while the equipment was quite different, the result was the same: a successful trip of 400+ nautical miles between cities poorly served by the airlines, and more or less on my schedule.