Airline Pilot Posts

Capt. BeattyA disinformation campaign falsely links “DEI” to airline accidents – let’s check the facts.By Capt. Jenny BeattyThere is no extant literature examining this question, so I accessed various sources to compile available data. I research…

While wandering around online the other day, I ran across Jenny Beatty’s post, which offered practical advice following the Azerbaijan Airlines E-190 and a Jeju Air Boeing 737-800 airline crashes. The guidelines are simple but are well worth …

In Episode #355 of Aviation News Talk, Max Trescott and I discussed pilot decision-making behind the wrong runway landing of an American Eagle Embraer 170 at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport (ORD) in late September. A few extenuat…

A long voicemail from my nephew is not what I expected after I ignored a call from an unknown number. Recently married, he was on his honeymoon in Cartegena, Colombia, and from their hotel they could see the airport. This led to what he described as…

For reasons unexplained, when perusing the FAA website to see what might be new and/or interesting in advisory circular land, discovering a draft AC 150/5200, Reporting Wildlife Aircraft Strikes, triggered my mental recording of Tom Jones singing &#…

Given the capable reliability of aviation technology today, in the realm of a perfect world, single-pilots flying people-carrying commercial and military aircraft seems a logical hypothetical possibility.To prove the reality of this possibility, th…

Talking last week to a 30-something professional pilot about his journey to a Gulfstream cockpit, he brought my interrogation to a dead silent stop with his answer to one question. After he summarized the chronology of his pilot certificates and rat…

ADM—Aeronautical Decision Making—is a system of thinking that benefits all aspects of life on the ground as well as in the air because it is a reflective way of processing situations composed of often uncertain variables. These situations prepare us…

by Micah Engber, contributor(Listen to the audio)In some ways, I’m very fortunate. Some of you know this from listening to my ramblings as I muse along on The Airplane Geeks Podcast. Sometimes it might be on The Airline Pilot Guy, or with Pl…

Unless you’re an aviation history geek or just a pilot who resides in Illinois, you might not have heard of Octave Chanute. I only knew the name early on when I joined the Air Force because there was a Base in southern Illinois named for the f…

Aviators live and die by their acronyms, so reading one unfamiliar motivates a frenzy of catch-up research. A short news item about changes ICAO recently made to special procedures for in-flight contingencies in oceanic airspace focused on something…

Rarely are the dots so closely connected to an epiphany that turns a train of thought on the future of automated aviation in the opposite direction.SkyDriveThe first dot was an August 29 New York Times story, Humans Take a Step Closer to “Fl…

Semantically, Students and Learners Are Not SynonymousThe AOPA online headline about the 2020 update of the Aviation Instructor’s Handbook immediately captured my attention because — What’s Behind the FAA’s Switch from Student to…

Concentrating on a short-term goal is natural when facing unpleasant restrictions, but these inconveniences pale in comparison to the long-term consequences. What unites both timeframes is the inescapable reality that as individuals, societies, and …

Bob Crandall retired in 1998 as chairman, president, and CEO of AMR, parent organization to American Airlines and while many people today might not remember his name, they’ll pretty quickly recognize what he created while he was at the helm.B…

Embry Riddle Aeronautical University researchers are asking INSTRUMENT-rated PRIVATE pilots and AIRLINE pilots to complete a 2-5 minute questionnaire (https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/GK3ZD3B) as to the amount/type of NON-revenue flying in light aircr…

A recent New York Times story about the hidden drug epidemic rooted in the conflict between prescribed medications and over-the-counter (OTC) drugs and supplements focused on people in their 60s, but as I read, I could easily see that pilots taking …

During the interviews for a story on avionics interfaces, one source made a passing reference to interface failure of the Boeing 737 Max MCAS (Maneuver Characteristics Augmentation System). The significance of this observation did not resonate until…

In the cover feature of the September 18, 2019 New York Times Magazine, William Langeweishe presents a cogent, comprehensive, and nuanced answer to its interrogative headline, “What Really Brought Down the Boeing 737 Max?” The subhead su…

I rather fancy myself as a translator of aviation speak, trying to be sure people who read about our industry really understand what I’m trying to explain, whether that’s in print or online.The past few weeks have been a nightmare for m…

Md Nor Yusof, chairman of Malaysian Airline System Bhd., right, told reporters on March 25, 2014 that Flight 370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean with no survivors. The search for wreckage was suspended. (Photographer: Goh Seng Chong/Bloomberg © 2…

With retention of active duty aviators and recruitment of qualified newcomers to fill empty cockpits a growing challenge for America’s armed forces, might it be time to reopen the flight training door to enlisted pilots who meet the physical a…

As most sentient people know, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Or maybe it is just laziness because developing a new, more efficient way of educating pilots is too much time, effort, and money. Wh…

For the past six years, Redbird, which has developed a family of aviation training devices, has sponsored a flight-training symposium attended by a hundred or more of the land’s leading aviation educators. Known as the Redbird Migration, in th…