Coms

No surprises

It helps to know what’s coming

The article “Start Here” in the August Flight Training magazine is terrific! Too many folks take a haphazard start into aviation and get frustrated when things don’t go as expected and the price of aviation comes as a surprise.

LeRoy Walker
Durham, North Carolina

Tradeoffs

Just finished Budd Davisson’s article “Bundle of Energy” in August’s Flight Training. What a great article and a lesson all flight instructors should employ. We know it’s not a question of if, but when we will have an engine failure. And we know most responses are not routine nor predictable, but they should be—or, rather, can be.

I recently did a flight review with Mark Murphy, P–51 and warbirds instructor pilot, and it was the best flight review yet for me. Imagine every takeoff and landing configuration with an engine-out scenario, then toss in varying altitudes and distances from the runway with different climb and bank angles.

In my mind, it’s some of the best training. Learning how to transfer altitude to energy to get you where you need to be and realizing in a pinch that might be a pine tree.

Great stuff.

Mark Keneston
Ballston Spa, New York

Out of place

Peter A. Bedell’s piece “What is the ME3…” (August 2018 Flight Training) really has no place in this magazine. Perhaps it would be better suited to publication in his union’s monthly magazine instead.

The truth is, Emirates, Etihad, and Qatar offer top-notch service that far exceeds the service provided by U.S. air carriers. (Not one U.S. carrier made the Forbes “2018 Ten Best Airlines”—nor have any made the list in many years.) Passengers look for reasonable prices and good service when they shop for airline flights. That an airline is subsidized by its government is really no concern to folks paying for tickets.

I really don’t care about the quality of work life of folks flying my airplane or serving me in the cabin. In fact, I venture that the entitled attitude displayed in this piece contributes to the deplorable levels of service to which U.S. air carriers have sunk. The vast majority of airlines in this country rely on our broken system of bankruptcy laws to wipe the slate clean of debt every few years. That, along with unreasonable demands and pattern bargaining by unions, which have gained far too much power, led to the rather dismal experience in air travel for us here in the United States.

I suggest that Captain Bedell stick to his usual great articles about practical issues affecting those of us who make flight training and flying our bread and butter.

Jonathan Greenway
Frederick, Maryland

Given the slip

I was excited to see the Technique article in the July issue of Flight Training as I have been trying to understand the difference between forward slips and side slips. Alas, the promise of the article was not fulfilled. Five steps are depicted—the first three steps address preparing for entering the forward slip and the final step addresses coming out of the slip, leaving the fourth step for what to actually do in the forward slip. Yet, frustratingly, the fourth step actually talks about side slips! The sidebar on the difference between side slips and forward slips doesn’t help much, it talks about the differences in results of the two slips.

How about a follow-up article on the details of a executing a forward slip?

Thanks for the fine magazine.

Curtis Wells
Uhland, Texas