Get the latest news on coronavirus impacts on general aviation, including what AOPA is doing to protect GA, event cancellations, advice for pilots to protect themselves, and more.
Read More
Already a member? Please login below for an enhanced experience. Not a member?
Join today
As the flying season closes for a lot of the country, and the promise of a COVID vaccine on the horizon, I ask you to consider what your airport can do to encourage visitors to come to your home ‘drome. Hopefully in 2021 we will fly more frequently for pleasure, business, recreation and charitable purposes. ...
Before I delve into my thesis, I must preface that I find narrow proclamations in aviation to be quite dangerous. I recall in 2015 saying to myself that I “hadn’t found a crosswind I couldn’t handle yet.” A few weeks later featured nearly flying into a fence….during a crosswind that I couldn’t handle. Such binary ...
If you’re reading this, chances are you are an instrument-rated pilot, or at least considering becoming one. Under instrument flight rules, if the weather, plus or minus an hour of your ETA, is expected to be worse than a 2,000 feet ceiling and visibility of less than 3 miles, you need to file an alternate ...
Pilots don’t deal with emergencies nearly as much as the people in Hollywood would have you believe. The majority of flights are uneventful, and most of the ones that are eventful fall that way because of the weather, not because of an engine fire or a hijacking. In my career, I’ve had a number of ...
Taking yourself and your aircraft to their absolute limits can teach you things you never knew about yourself, your aircraft, and those involved in the operation of your airplane. While we strive for perfection in our training, the maintenance of our aircraft, and the planning of our missions realistically we will never achieve any of those. That ...
Some of you may know that I am a licensed psychotherapist. Since March of this year most counselors have been able to see clients virtually to address mounting mental health issues from the pandemic. I could probably work 24/7 right about now. I truly have never experienced anything like this in my 29 years of practice. Last week ...
Flying Citizen of the World to the South Pole and then the North Pole can create stresses on the aircraft that it was never designed to endure. Furthermore, taking a stock aircraft and modifying it in over 50 ways and hoping all those systems will work in perfect harmony for 8 months and 23 days ...
On most flights taken in the Cub, I come back a much happier person. However, on certain flights, I am in a transcendent state of happiness for much of the rest of the day afterward. I have often wondered why it was the case, initially ascribing my feelings as proportional to the majesty of the ...
When you are making a living by living on the road, you will become an expert on certain issues that can arise. In our case, we don’t often rent cars, so most of our problems will be with hotels. There are several things that stand out as common areas of distress when it comes to ...
We are well into the COVID-19 pandemic, and my airline just sent out a memo reminding everyone that flu season is coming while imploring us not to come to work if we are sick. In the past, this would only happen if the flu was running rampant, but this year there is an added sense ...
