A few weekends ago my wife, Alex, and I planned to fly to Lebanon, New Hampshire, from our home airport in Blairstown, New Jersey. A temporary flight restriction centered on Bedminster, New Jersey, would be active during our expected departure and return, however, leading us to wonder if the trip was worth the hassle.
Whether you're contemplating a first attempt at the Fisk Arrival or only the latest of many flights to EAA AirVenture Oshkosh in July, there's no time like the present to begin preparing for the busiest airspace in the world.
Planning is a skill that CFIs are obliged to teach students beginning with the first lesson. The adage “Know what to do before you need to do it” applies to all aspects of flying, including teaching others.
I passed my instrument checkride but then didn’t fly for more than four years before returning to flying in 2024. Even then, I knew true proficiency would be an ongoing process.
Your aircraft is not a bloodhound: Its nose often doesn’t point in the direction of flight—which is super important when it comes to understanding relative wind, a component of stall theory.
From the moment we wake up to our phone alarm, technology pervades every aspect of our lives, including aviation. Electronic flight bags, GPS navigation, glass cockpits, and iPads are just a few examples of how we incorporate technology into our flying.
Many checklists and instrument approach procedures come with notes. These notes appear within the checklists in your aircraft's flight manual, and they are displayed in a box just under the frequency, course, and elevation box on an instrument approach procedure chart.
While writers and publishers use italics or bold type to signal the importance of words and ideas, the engineers who write pilot’s operating handbooks have something else in mind.
No pilot plans to wind up walking in the wilderness halfway to their intended destination, yet no pilot has ever regretted being prepared for that very outcome.
This time of year, the sun sets earlier and earlier. It’s a beautiful time to fly, but there are several ways in which night flying is vastly different from flying during the day.
After your training flight, the postflight debrief, and your drive home from the airport, I want you to sit down alone for a few minutes in a nice, quiet place.
It’s simple. You need a clean aircraft windshield for a clear view, especially when it comes to scanning for traffic. But, like many things in flying, there’s a right way, and a wrong way, to clean the windscreen.
I was recently at my small local airport when two transient airplanes flew in. The pilots stayed for a couple of hours, didn’t purchase fuel, and remained within sight of their aircraft the entire time.
I remember early in my flying career an older pilot commenting that the most dangerous time to fly an airplane is immediately after it comes out of maintenance. “That’s an exaggeration, bodacious, too,” I thought.
Have you helped your students see the practical significance of computing takeoff distance? If not, then it’s possible their takeaway is that the exercise is a silly preflight task we do only as required by FAR 91.103 but, otherwise, a waste of time. As an examiner, I routinely see this calculation dismissed as such. Here are some suggestions to make teaching the takeoff distance performance calculation meaningful.
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Get instant access to Flight Training's special issue titled You Can Fly: Your Path to Become a Pilot. This beginning pilots' resource guide explains what you can expect from your introductory flight through initial training—and how to turn your dream of flying into reality. Simply enter your name and email address.