A long time ago it was decided by people much smarter than I am that only one language should be the language of aviation. That language was to be English, regardless of a pilot’s nation of origin. Those same people decided that a specific lexicon should be created within English to reduce any confusion spawned […]
Human Factors
Planes vs. birds
Landing on the Harbor Visual Runway 29 Approach into KPWM can be a 95-second joy ride if the time of day and the time of year are just right. For us, that flight, it was. I flew the crowded 50-seat regional jet in a descending arc, starting at Elizabeth City, Maine. We traveled north along […]
Managing anger in the cockpit
“Louisa County traffic, November four four two eight Quebec departing Runway Niner for left crosswind departure, Louisa County traffic.” I visually cleared final approach and the traffic pattern. Seeing all four quadrants empty, I took the runway and took off. Upwind off KLKU looked fantastic. A riot of yellows, oranges and reds overwhelmed any remaining […]
Would you hesitate to declare an emergency?
The fact that all three of my passengers were throwing up simultaneously left me three options: Tough it out and press on to our destination; join them in their nauseous state; or declare an emergency and get the hell on the ground. My right seat passenger was a Horizon Air first officer. She thought she […]
The Black Hole Departure disaster
A dark cloud has recently settled on the general aviation community from the fatal airplane crash of Babar and Haris Suleman. They were a father and son pilot team who were attempting to fly around the world. They had become popular through social media. Followers of their journey wonder what happened that their Beechcraft could […]
Presence of mind
The first time I took the aircraft controls away from a copilot, it was from a Marine Corps aircraft commander. He’d flown in Iraq. He’d balanced his Sikorsky CH-46 Sea Knight transport helicopter — a twin-rotored behemoth — off the edge of a San Francisco high-rise while troops “on exercises” stormed out the back. Me? […]
Fatigue: The pilot’s common cold
Returning from a short tropical vacation, I barely napped on the transatlantic red-eye. It was the night before my third airplane instructional flight. During the ground lesson, I thought I was hiding my jetlag pretty well from my instructor. It turns out he saw through my ruse and blindsided me with one of his own. […]
Pilot bias
The first time I rode in a helicopter it was to chase down Donald Trump’s yacht. It would be another six years before I would get my own pilot’s license, so the pilot told me to keep my feet away from the rudder pedals and not to move them — no matter what. I opened […]
Expectations and fixation
My first flight lesson was out of Virginia’s Leesburg Executive Airport (KJYO), inside the Dulles Class B airspace. We took off and performed some air work in the practice area. Then we headed back toward the airport. My instructor told me to find the airport so he could show me how to do a pattern […]