Many instructors compliment their student pilots’ learning sessions in the cockpit with some touch-and-goes, but some CFIs do not think the practice actually contributes to proficiency and safety. However, experienced pilots sometimes turn to this practice drill because can be a good way to get used to a new aircraft. Sometimes you might see a …
Competent and professional contact with air traffic controllers is a weak area for even experienced pilots. Working in air traffic patterns is a basic part of life for student pilots, but it’s an important reality of aviation life that should be continually considered. While managing all the systems in the cockpit and making constant decisions …
Learning to fly in any geographic area holds its own benefits and challenges. Choosing the place to take your flight training means learning to turn these challenges to your advantage as a student pilot. San Diego is an ideal place to learn to fly because not only does it present many advantages, any challenges it …
Becoming accountable for yourself in a cockpit, not to mention your passengers, is a serious responsibility. Before you leave the ground on your own, it helps to familiarize yourself with several concepts and realities of pilot life. For example, learning to fly involves a lot of math and science. However, being a pilot doesn’t require …
READ MORE The Prep Work for Learning to Fly: What Do You Need to Learn Before Ever Flying a Plane?
The Crash in the Desert At the Desert View Watch Tower on the South Rim of Grand Canyon National Park, which offers an unparalleled view of the Colorado River and Painted Desert, a bronze plaque is part of thescene. It’s a monument to victims of a 1956 airplane crash, a jarring modern object near a …
Some people warm up their cars before taking to the road but others don’t. Some use electric turning signals, some use hand signals, and others don’t. There is a lot of variation in how people begin their drives with some using a more thoughtful, experienced approach and others just taking their chances. In aviation, with …
With all of the safety advances in equipment and in pilot training, the vast majority of airplane problems are surmountable, and even if an airplane makes its way to the ground against the will of the pilot, in the majority of cases things come out acceptable and nobody dies. As a matter of fact, after …
READ MORE Preparing a Small Airplane for an Anticipated Hard Landing
Pilots are taught that they must check out an airplane with great care before taking to the air with the machine. This process is called a preflight. But what goes on during a preflight. Does a pilot walk-up and kick the tires and peer into a gas tank to make sure there’s enough then start …
Whether you’re sitting in an airport restaurant gazing out at the runway or maybe standing at a small airport with your nose poked through the chain-link fence watching airplane landings and take offs, it’s always thrilling to see an air machine connect with or depart from the pavement. There’s just something special about seeing thousands …
Let’s begin with this: Airplane accidents and incidents, whether in a relatively small plane like a four-seater or in giant airliners, are incredibly-rare events and, despite the common fiction, people do not typically die in airplane accidents. According to the National Transportation Safety Board’s latest, 2015 Civil Aviation Accident Statistics (the latest combined data available), …
Remember back when you were learning how to drive? At the beginning, it was probably kind of confusing, especially if you were trying to learn on a stick shift. How fast do I let the clutch out? How can I figure out where to put my foot when I’m not looking down? How do I drive …
Most fields of endeavor have tricks of the trade or rules of thumb that help practitioners take care of business more easily. For example, one trick to parallel-parking a normal car in countries where we drive on the right side of the road is to wait to turn the steering wheel hard right until you, …
Unlike actually flying an airplane, virtually all of us have been passengers in one. If we’re in an airliner, we watch the flight attendants move around the cabin and act predictably. We’ll hear cabin announcements made by the cockpit crew and, if we’re extremely lucky, we will even be able to hear the announcement well …
READ MORE The Awesome and Surprising Experience of Flying an Airplane