Aviation Education Posts

As a word merchant and an aviator, words are important. They are the foundation of communication, and in many instances they can be the difference between life and death. “Hold Short” is but one example. Equally important is our semantic…

By Rob Mark An early scene in An Officer and a Gentleman, the 1982 movie about U.S. Navy recruits slogging their way through officer candidate school, has granite-tough Marine Gunnery Sgt. Foley (actor Lou Gossett Jr.) confronting candidate Zack May…

Given the traffic seen on my daily stroll around town, except for the EAA AirVenture Oshkosh late summer interlude, the sky over Omro seems to be a no-fly zone. When the wind is right, I’ll see a regional jet whining its way north to Appleton …

October kudos to the editors of NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) Callback for selecting atypical reports for their periodic “What Would You Have Done?” issue. In all the years I’ve been reading the selected scen…

In June 2023, the FAA published a 167-page document outlining the agency’s desire to replace dozens of 40-year-old airport control towers with new environmentally friendly brick-and-mortar structures. These towers are, of course, where hundred…

Like many aviators, I’m a weather geek. The internet has sustained this addiction, and since 2002, The National Weather Services Aviation Weather Center has been the one weather product I cannot do without. And it will become more potent next …

Wandering among the flying machines that carpet the Oshkosh acreage during EAA AirVenture 2023, nothing of interest caught my eye until it spied an immaculate blue P-51C Mustang. On its flawless flanks, in sunshine-yellow letters was its name, Thund…

Back in the day, airports without air traffic controllers working to maintain order and predictable behavior from the pilots flying to and from it were often referred to as “uncontrolled” because they did not have an air traffic control …

The North Atlantic compaction of the Titan submersible on its Titanic adventure has generated some interesting media efforts that approach the mishap from various angles. It has a lot in common with airborne adventures. The only difference is the vi…

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 &#…

Aviation safety, when you get right down to it, is an endless round of risk assessment what ifs. There is much to learn when what ifs become real life right now. If you survive, that is. Another way to learn is from the decisions made by others. Ca…

Since there’s no statute of limitations on dumb, I present to you a flight that was not one of my finer moments. My co-pilot’s name has been changed to be certain he doesn’t receive any head-shaking comments from his flying buddie…

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…

Aviators track their flying lives one hour at a time. No matter where they are in their aeronautical journey, just starting or finally resting on retired wings. Every hour is important. Some were more exciting. Others were more meaningful because th…

If you keep reading the Aviation Weather Handbook, FAA-H-8083-28, you’ll learn that space weather reports are officially known at the Space Weather Advisory in chapter 26.7. It is a newcomer to the universe of meteorology. The International Ci…

Right after pounding the final words of Reading the Weather into my computer, I opened the Aviation Weather Handbook, FAA-H-8083-28 and scrolled to Chapter 23. At first glance, space weather stands tall as a meteorological oxymoron. How can weather—…

It is that time of year when Mother Nature is in a gray and gloomy mood that sucks the Vitamin D out of your soul. The Scots, who know something about unpleasant weather, have a word for it—dreich—that beat glaikit, scunnered, and shoogle as the mos…

Each of us has a flying family related not by blood or marriage but by the spirit of flight. Recognizing the contribution of an eligible flight instructor, maintenance technician, or FAA Safety Team teacher can be a challenge. So why not nominate th…

Every seven years, Thanksgiving and my birthday get together on the same day. My oldest boy and his family made the 10-hour drive from Missouri to deliver themselves as the best present I could have ever hoped for, and that included Boomer, their 2-…

It seems a safe assumption that the only people who have not yet seen the spectrum of aviation damage wrought by Hurricane Ian are those have endured its torments and await reconnection to their electrical and data grids. The rest of us have witness…

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…

It’s been slightly more than a year since I’ve flown on an airliner. I certainly didn’t miss airline travel in the middle of the pandemic, but this summer’s cancellation and delay insanity created an avoidance mindset that…

President Harry Truman signed Executive Order 9981 on July 26, 1948. It mandated the desegregation of the US military. Truman stood firm in the face of pushback from politicians and military officers of all ranks from all branches who opposed an int…

Attracted to unusual and unknown aircraft, I walked past the record-setting Airbus Perlan 2 stretching its 84-foot wingspan across AirVenture’s Boeing Plaza to find out what the large, white turboprop was and why its fuselage was a series of l…