Safety Posts

Listen to this show Between a Rock and a Hard Spot: Demands on air traffic controllers I’ve lost track of how many government shutdowns I’ve experienced during my life. Some under Democrat presidents, others under Republicans. During a shutdown, a s…

Wait a second. “You want me to analyze the crash landings in a half dozen movies? And then tell you if they’re realistic?” I asked the Vanity Fair producer. Her response was quick. “Yes.”  I’ve had a few whacky assignments over the…

NTSB News Talk logo A few months ago, my buddy Max Trescott and I realized we were speaking to each other three or four times a week about recent aircraft accidents. We’ve both been flying for more than 50 years and have both hold multiple CFI ratin…

Ed note: While this story is a bit dated, the winter-flying lessons are not. Inexperience, stupidity, get-home-itis — take your pick. Any of them applied to me one late November evening as I cruised Just east of Chicago’s Loop with an electric night…

Safe Initial Climbs Can Mean Tradeoffs A pilot’s first takeoff in a jet airplane is a true rite of passage, almost as eye opening as a first solo. Push those power levers forward, and a pilot’s body is soon pressed back against the seat. That feedba…

Have you or someone you know ever considered becoming an air traffic controller for the FAA? I spent nearly 10 years of my aviation career working for the agency, and I loved the work. Coincidentally, the FAA just announced its latest recruiting dri…

In the Citation III Confessions of a New Corporate Pilot Life would be sweet, I thought, now that I’d successfully passed my Cessna Citation III (CE-650) type rating check ride (this was a few years back). It meant I’d be flying my first swept-wing …

Note: This story was corrected on August 10th at 10:23 am, thanks to the help of a sharp-eyed reader. Making an ATR-72 Spin I wasn’t in Brazil on Friday afternoon, but I saw the post on Twitter or X (or whatever you call it) showing a Brazil ATR-72…

Decades ago, when I learned to fly, it was well-known that a commercial co-pilot/first officer was allowed to occupy the right seat of a transport airplane only if they’d proven themselves subservient enough to understand that the guy in the left se…

It’s about trust I remember riding our crew bus with a bunch of other pilots, and flight attendants in the spring of 1991 not long after our employer Midway Airlines had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The old red and white school bus ra…

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 “W…

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…

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 buddies. RM ____________…

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 Civil Av…

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…

Here’s hoping you had a happy Christmas, and that Mother Nature’s preparatory frosty whiteout didn’t deprive you the company of traveling to family and friends. With them on their way home, and the Christmas clutter cleared away, contemplating resol…

American Champion 7KCAB Although this story is old, the details and the learning experiences are as valuable today as they were years ago. Rob __________________________________________________ Inexperience, stupidity, get-home-itis …

My close friends know that as a pilot I have one deep-seated fear. If I should ever buy it in an airplane, I don’t want it to be for something that’s classically not me, something I’ve spent my career as a flight instructor campaigning against, like…

Good pilots become better pilots with experience. One of an aviator’s top hurdles on the way to gaining the best experience is becoming a practical risk manager. When does a flight make sense considering the fuel available, the cargo, the weather, t…

A freshly minted CFI friend of mine called me recently almost completely out of breath with the exciting news that he’d managed to grab a few hours of loggable time in the right seat of an old Citation II, a bird that certainly turned out to be a gr…

If you’ve already earned a Private Pilot certificate — a PPL they call it in some other parts of the world — you’ll probably remember those final words of encouragement from the government official who oversaw the checkride … “Remember, you now ha…

Pursing my eclectic interests, the library emailed a curbside pickup notice for David Rakoff’s Half Empty, as in the pessimist’s assessment of a glass vessel whose volume is divided between some unknown liquid and the ambient atmosphere. On the cove…

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…

Weather.gov The FAA recently posted a fascinating story on Medium, Taking the Turbulence Out of Flight that said ADS-B turbulence reports offer the possibility of more accurate reports on the bumps in the sky. What the story never fully explained is…