Whether it's your favorite seaplane, tailwheel, complex, or high-performance airplane that you hope to someday fly as pilot in command, the FAA requires training and testing, or an endorsement by an authorized instructor, to have an additional category, class, or operating privilege added to your credentials.
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AOPA continues to receive questions regarding endorsements needed by pilots to fly complex and high-performance aircraft. With the changes to 14 CFR 61.31 in mid-1997, the FAA changed the requirements for a person to act as PIC of these aircraft. The wrong endorsement could mean a violation or invalidate your aircraft insurance.
Pilot Magazine
The Model 525 CitationJet is the quintessential entry level jet.
The seemingly simple act of loading an approach into a modern flight deck has a few subtleties that can cause problems for even experienced pilots.
In my years of transitioning piston pilots to turbine aircraft, I have witnessed a pattern of learning roadblocks that frustrated many aspiring jet jockeys.
The flight from Charleston, South Carolina, would be my first in the new model, an upgrade from the Eclipse 500, which itself had several versions of varying capabilities during its short production run.
IFR Fix
The arcing dashed arrow that ushers in the missed approach lends it a deceptively simple appearance, but there’s more here than greets the eye.
Spot quiz: What is the METAR/TAF code for smoke?
In the satellite age, it’s still true that the less precision exists for navigation, the more precise the flying must be.
Raw-data aviation remains relevant in one respect: No one ever said that pilots flying raw-data approaches had sacrificed their airmanship on the altar of technology.
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