Avfuel has revealed that James Bennett is the lucky pilot who won a two-year lease on a brand-new BMW in the Avfuel booth at the 2015 National Business Aviation Association’s Convention and Exhibition held in Las Vegas last month. After a month of logistics, the car arrived at Bennett’s home in the Pacific Northwest just in time […]
General Aviation
Spatial disorientiation, lack of instrument proficiency fatal combination
The pilot filed an instrument flight rules (IFR) flight plan with flight services, and the briefer asked if he would like weather information. The pilot replied “no,” and stated that the weather “looked good.” However, at that time, the weather at the destination airport included visibility of 2 miles and a 400-foot overcast ceiling. The […]
Pictures of the day: Pristine C180
Ace photographer Star Novak of McFarlane Aviation Products in Baldwin City, Kansas, sent in these photos, noting: “We had the most pristine C180 stop by Vinland Valley Aerodrome (K64) this summer on its way to the American southwest for wintering. The weather was coming in, and we rolled him into a hangar until the storm […]
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 […]
NASA launches competition for airspace redesign
NASA has launched a new competition for the redesign of our national airspace. Sky for All: Air Mobility for 2035 and Beyond is a $15,000 challenge to develop ideas for technologies that could be part of a clean-slate design and concept of operations for the airspace of the future. The challenge is open now. Deadline for submissions […]
Video: Every pilot should have two airplanes
Our friends at FunPlacesToFly.com recently posted a video about their good friend, Bob Rogers, who has the best of both worlds: An experimental aircraft for pure fun and a general aviation aircraft for long trips and comfort. See his Mustang II and his 1966 V-35 Beechcraft Bonanza in this video:
GA pilot volunteers to fly heart patient home for Christmas
After undergoing a heart transplant less than two weeks before Christmas, a Maine man got the ultimate gift this Christmas — a free flight home. The 54-year-old has traveled from Rockland, Maine, to Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and back 53 separate times, all courtesy of Patient Airlift Services (PALS), according to a report […]
GA airports included in FAA’s Runway Incursion Mitigation Inventory
Several popular general aviation airports, as well as a number of other airfields across the country, may participate in a new FAA program that will provide funding for the mitigation of runway incursions at facilities that have complex or potentially confusing runway-taxiway geometry, according to a report from the National Business Aviation Association (NBAA). In […]
AWOS to be installed at S52
A new weather reporting system will be installed at Methow Valley State Airport (S52) in Washington state in February. The Washington State Department of Transportation will purchase and operate the weather reporting system, also known as an Automated Weather Observation System (AWOS), for use at the airport in Winthrop and neighboring airports. Once activated, the AWOS will […]