When the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln sailed from San Diego on January 3 under the command of Capt. Amy Bauernschmidt, the first female officer to command a carrier, a notable item on the skipper’s résumé was her piloting experience including more than 3,000 hours in U.S. Navy aircraft and as commander of a helicopter maritime strike squadron.

I took my flight instructor practical test on a blustery, overcast fall day in 1990. After a lengthy oral interrogation and a lumpy flight, my FAA inspector made out a temporary certificate and handed it to me, saying, “Now you are going to really learn about flying.”

We sure got a rise out of the readership in May when we dedicated one of our weekly Training Tips columns to the NTSB’s critique of flight instructor conduct, noted its criticism of FAA oversight, and offered some advice to flight training consumers on how to avoid getting burned.

A sample private pilot knowledge test question pulled from a recently released batch on the FAA Training and Testing website asks: “The Aeronautical Information Manual specifically encourages pilots to turn on their landing lights when operating below 10,000 feet, day or night, and especially when operating
A. in Class B airspace.
B. in conditions of reduced visibility.
C. within 15 miles of a towered airport.”

I’ve heard more than one pilot fret about what to do when they solo. They don’t want to just “bore holes in the sky.”

Nothing is impressed more emphatically upon new student pilots than the importance of using checklists in every flight phase from preflight to shutdown. But wait—aren’t there situations when there’s no time for that?

The U.S. Secret Service and the U.S. Coast Guard were waiting at the FBO when a Piper PA–32 pilot who had just penetrated the inner ring of a temporary flight restriction (TFR) taxied in.

The chief pilot of an aviation company I once worked for was like a human yaw detector: If you allowed even the slightest bit of slip or skid into your aircraft-control technique when he was aboard, he would emit a groan easily audible above the roar of the engine or engines.

An email I received recently concluded with a one-word expression of good wishes: “Tailwinds.”

The Millennium Falcon spacecraft made the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs—not 14 as the character Rey states to the ire of Han Solo in Star Wars: The Force Awakens—but nobody flies a better course reversal than she did while outmaneuvering bad guys in a scene from the 2015 movie.