Night Flight

To become a pilot, you are required to fly for 3 hours at night. That’s usually a box-checking exercise at most flight schools. We do it a little bit differently...

Curvature of the earth

Curvature of the earth and darker sky above. With all of my jet time, I've not had the experience of flying at 43,000' until recently, in the HA-420 HondaJet. Looks a bit different up here...

#p6aviation #hondajet #fun #earth #adventure

This could be you!

:30 of flying inspiration. Crater Lake, OR, USA

Immersive Training: NY to LA [part 4/8]

Flying into busy urban airports is a challenge. Flying into less busy rural airports is a different kind of challenge. 

First, they’re not so easy to find. Looking for a runway located in the middle of hundreds of miles of fields sounds easy, but is usually not the case.

Second, they usually don’t offer the amenities that larger, busier airports do. But, that is usually a beautiful thing. What it means is less chain restaurants and more local home cooking. 

Third, if you appreciate mid-century architecture and design, you’ll really find some special buildings, airplanes, hangars, etc. 

During our trip, just before we landed at Denver Int’l, we stopped at Emporia KS for fuel. Different kind of airport, different kind of experience, but a part of the country that I hadn’t seen before and enjoyed every minute of it.

Immersive Training: NY to LA [part 3/8]

To one degree or another, most pilots fear landing at Class B airports. It’s a valid concern, but like most things, can be overcome with experience. You just need to try it a few times, survive it and improve at it. 

Not all “bravos” are the same, so a great way to approach it is to start at the less busy ones (i.e. KPIT, not KJFK). During our trip to LA, we landed at KDEN , which was a bucket list airport for our client and since I'd never landed there, thought it was pretty great also.

Like most things in aviation, the key to success is planning and the 3 areas to pay most attention to are:

1. Who will you likely be speaking to? Multiple approach controllers, tower, ground, ramp/apron, FBO -- it's a long list but one that you can prepare for and even rehearse if you wanted to.

2. What approach/runway can you expect? It's somewhat a roll of the dice, but winds and direction you're approaching from will usually dictate your initial options, then parking convenience could play a factor. This means that if the general aviation/FBO ramp is adjacent to a particular runway, approach/tower could set you up for that runway, if traffic/spacing allows.

3. How to taxi to parking? Approach/landing is one thing, taxiing at a Class B is another. They are large pieces of real estate with complex charts and endless taxiways. Again, try to plan your likely route ahead of time, write down your taxi instructions if needed and take your time (though not too much time if in KORD ;-)

Short story, Class B's are complicated, but the experience is worth it!

Immersive Training: NY to LA [part 2/8]

When you’re learning how to fly, all experience matters. Imagine being a student pilot, taking off into real weather and flying solely by reference to instruments for over an hour. It’s a lot at first and not even required to become a private pilot, but we believe there is only upside. Not only is it an awesome experience but it actually demystifies a ton of uncertainties in a new pilot’s mind and is a major confidence booster. And it’s all done with total safety in mind — your instructor (as always) is fully prepared to take over if needed, but also perfectly content letting you figure it out, while helping guide on the nuances.

Student pilot departing IFR

Immersive Training: NY-LA

We teach people how to fly every single day. What makes us different is how we do it.

Rather than staying within a 25-mile radius of home base as is standard practice, we take every opportunity we can to get pilots on the road to experience the adventure, challenges and decision-making skills needed to successfully enjoy flying.

Flight training isn’t just about learning how to land, avoid stalls and other fundamental maneuvers. It’s about seeing the whole picture, thinking ahead and really becoming “pilot-in-command” of your flight.

In this 8-part series, I’ll break down each leg of our most recent XC from NY-LA with a student pilot in N383AP — a 2018 Cirrus SR22T affectionatly known as Alpha Pop.

The No-Go

This is a tough post to write.

I always say that making the no-go decision is a hard thing to do.

We’re pilots and we are programmed to get the job done. We battle finicky airplanes, bad weather and all manner of x-factors to get our passengers from Point A to Point B.

But part of our job is to make tough decisions. And sometimes, the decision is to not carry on and to abort the immediate mission.

This has never been an easy decision for me to make but I’ve had to make it a handful of times and it gets a little easier with time. The reasons for the decision have always primarily been to weather (i.e. not being able to make it through a line of storms) and health (no/little sleep the night before), though there have been other reasons like an airplane just not acting exactly right.

I say it’s a tough post to write because I want to deliver 100% of the time and I will initially see an aborted mission as a failure. But then I come to realize that keeping my passengers safe and comfortable is actually a success and that although a flight may not go, it’s a relatively small deal and can never be the wrong decision.

Children of the Magenta Line

One of my favorite training videos ever. Old school yes, but the philosophy remains true. Part of the American Airlines Advanced Aircraft Maneuvering Program (AAMP), Captain Warren VanderBurgh presents his thoughts on automation dependency.

CX 2020

Every year, Cirrus Aircraft holds an annual gathering of training centers, service centers and other partners.

The result is usually an interesting conversation about training, safety and innovation. That last word gets thrown around a lot in life and the media. But I think Cirrus Aircraft actually pushes hard to make sure that they are holding true to it. That’s why we partner with them exclusively.

In a few hours, we should know what’s coming in 2020 for the SR & SF series aircraft. I hope that there are significant updates for the SR series, though I struggle to imagine what they could be.

At this point, I think the single engine piston aircraft is pretty tricked out. But I am usually proven wrong and hope to be this time also.

#p6aviation #cirrusaircraft #cx2020 #cirrus #generalaviation #flightinstruction

You just don’t see this on the east coast…

Departing 35R out of KAPA, the controller was kind enough to give us a sharp right turn to avoid a duststorm approaching from over the Rockies ahead of a cold front. Ranks up with the craziest weather I’ve ever seen personally from an airplane.

Learning the Hard Way

There are some industries and occupations that are more forgiving than others.

By that, I mean that the consequences of bad decisions are not that painful, easily forgotten or written off with a financial/other penalty. Aviation is not that type of industry for reasons that I don’t need to be explicit about.

A large part of my pedagogy as an instructor pilot is that you are going to make poor decisions and mistakes in the cockpit. it’s just going to happen. Period. They are unavoidable.

BUT, as pilots, we strive to keep mistakes small and catch poor decisions early. If we can do that and not let them compound into a negative chain of events, we greatly improve our chances of a safe landing, which is the ultimate goal.

I have been meaning to write about this for a long time because I believe in it so strongly. Thankfully, I read a blog post by Fred Wilson this morning about his mistakes in the VC world, and it reminded me to write this. I’d say 7 of 10 his blog posts are direct analogs to aviation. I’m amazed at how closely aviation mirrors many other aspects of life.

The value of onboard weather

I am always learning. Especially about weather. Mother Nature is so powerful and you sometimes don’t know exactly where or at what intensity she’ll require that you yield to her.

At the entry-level training of general aviation, we often have a Sirius XM feed or less frequently, an actual radar antenna. 

In teaching, words matter and I appreciate when someone is able to simply get a point across powerfully. On that note, someone recently told me that you should use XM for strategic planning and radar for tactical execution. That is exactly right. Often, weather (like above) is not dangerous and XM is perfectly fine to get through it. However, when it gets bad, you need to respect weather and use radar.