Flying December 2022 / January 2023

THE OPENING OF the Smithsonian’s National Air & Space Museum in October marked a particularly auspicious occasion for general aviation—as curator Dorothy Cochrane and the team took the opportunity to create an entire gallery devoted to GA. Cochrane walked FLYING through the new gallery, Thomas W. Haas ‘We All Fly.’ There are five different sections. The first section is sport aviation, then private pilot flying, private aircraft manufacturing—and that’s the Cessnas, the Beeches, the Pipers—and then we have business aviation, and then we have humanitarian flight, and then utility flight. The entrance is all about trying to explain to the general public what general aviation is. As you explain it to them, you engage them, there are all kinds of ways that they can participate—or are already in it as…

IN AVIATION MEDIA, we live at the intersection of a rapidly advancing tech industry and the more conservative aerospace manufacturing complex. As I talk with colleagues across our mutual airspace, I often hear the term “fail fast” and what it means to them: Try things and learn quickly from errors so you can move on and continue to iterate at a rapid pace. I understand the reasoning behind this—and why it is crucial when we’re talking about pushing dinosaurs out of their comfort zones and creating new value for people from an innovative product. We’ve also witnessed the recent example on one of our oft-used social media channels, Twitter, as it undergoes transformation at the direction of its new owner, Elon Musk, also the cofounder of SpaceX. As for Twitter, we’ve…

WELCOME TO ISSUE #933, the latest issue of FLYING Magazine. You may have noticed that we have eliminated the publication date on the front of the magazine and have shifted to a number instead of a month and date as the issue identifier. This number represents the 933rd issue of FLYING, which demonstrates just how many times the magazine has been published in its history. When going back through the FLYING archives, I was struck by how timeless many of the articles are, often years and even decades later. While the technology has evolved over time, the fundamentals of what it means to be a pilot and the corresponding adventure and joy never changes. In compiling the number of issues FLYING has produced over the years, we considered not only those…

IN OUR LAST ISSUE, I addressed the value of competition and its benefits, such as driving participation, skill building, proficiency, and innovation. My focus was on competition at a professional (i.e. compensatory) level, but it was not without a lot of thought about the importance and value of competition for younger pilots. You have probably heard the phrase, “Start ’em young.” In aviation, how young is too young? While you can take an eager child flying any time, based on age, the first opportunity a young pilot would have to take the controls of a fixed-wing aircraft is in a glider. The federal aviation regulations allow one to apply for a student pilot glider certificate at the age of 14, as opposed to 16 years old for a student pilot certificate…

Happy With the Changes I am very impressed with this month’s print version [Q3 2022]. As a lifetime subscriber, and a published newspaper photographer, I had growing concern over the print magazine’s sustainability. The shrinking thickness [was a concern] as well, and many long-term writers going to a couple of big aviation member-based organizations to work. Julie, your time in charge has affected a variety of impressive improvements: perfect bound, high-quality, thicker coated paper, and the retention of writers, such as Peter, Martha, Les, and Sam. David Arbogast via email Experience Makes a Difference Capt. Les Abend’s Jumpseat column, “Qualification Shortage?” [2022 Buyers Guide], addresses a problem of government overreach. A Colgan Air regional flight under a codeshare agreement with Continental Airlines crashed in 2009 on approach to Buffalo, New…

Go-arounds aren’t terribly common under Part 121 commercial operations, and most airline pilots go a year or more between wave-offs. The most frequent cause is a lack of separation between landing traffic at busy airports, usually when air traffic control mistakenly vectors a heavier, faster aircraft behind a lighter, slower one. Unstabilized approaches are another common reason, either the result of being “slam-dunked” by ATC or simply misjudging a visual approach. It’s quite rare to go missed on account of poor weather, since Part 121 requires reported visibility to be above minimums before starting an approach. Because go-arounds are both uncommon and easy to botch, they are practiced frequently during recurrent simulator training, and it is now common to review go-around procedures during the approach briefing. SAM WEIGEL began flight…