I thought the flight went spectacularly. My first turbine experience — flying three hours solid over the Los Angeles trafficscape with the legendary helicopter traffic reporter Commander Chuck Street. In between his traffic reports, he’d given me the thumbs up and nods of approval. Life felt great. During my three-hour tour, Chuck tested my skills, […]
Why do we lie?
We pilots of a certain age were taught in school that George Washington never told a lie. Teachers drove the point home with a story about America’s first president and a certain felled cherry tree. I’m not sure why a lesson about being honest had to involve George Washington. Maybe it was to make the […]
Say again?
I once was the instructor for a high fashion student. Her day-trading job had recently netted her a lot of money. Her hard work paid out handsomely and she wanted everyone to know it. If that meant stepping out of the pilot’s seat of her own airplane in stylish high heels, so be it. Her […]
There’s a spouse in my head
I once told a friend that my first passenger on earning my private pilot license would be my brother-in-law and not my spouse, because flying my spouse would put too much pressure on me. At least I knew that much about myself. So it was with that in mind that I queried NASA’s Aviation Safety […]
Praise for pilots
In the spirit the new year brings, I choose to dedicate this month’s column to the pilots and aviation professionals whose teamwork, communication and training helped set things right after things went very wrong. While this column normally offers its readers a chance to learn from other fliers’ mistakes, on this occasion, I’d like to […]
Are pilots lone wolves or domesticated dogs?
I recently read about a study involving dogs in homes, dogs in shelters, and wolves. The researchers rounded up 10 animals from each category and gave them each a puzzle box containing a food reward. The catch was that the box could only be opened with some persistence. Eight of the 10 wolves successfully opened […]
Knowing when to step in
Two guys I never knew once flew for my first airline. One was a training captain, the other a freshly minted first officer. They were best of friends for as long as anyone could remember, so it was natural that the training captain would successfully lobby to get his best friend hired. It also didn’t surprise […]
The dread of sharing the skies with drones
Whenever I tell a group of pilots that I also fly helicopters, there’s always one guy in the group who says he can’t stand them. “I hate those things,” he’ll spew. “They’re unpredictable when they’re flying in the pattern. You never know which way they’re going to fly.” Helicopter pilots learn early in their training […]
NOTAM like the present
Pilots and air traffic controllers think that they’re so different from each other, but they’re not. They’re really two branches of the same aviation family. And judging from the research I did for this month’s column, they all agree that they hate the NOTAM system in its present state. Notices to Airmen (NOTAMs) are the […]