mtrescott Over a hundred pilots took our online GPS survey posted in June. Here are the results plus information on new GPS Guides for the iPhone. Please forward this information to all of your pilot friends with iPhones. Key GPS Survey Findings 80% of respondents have a portable GPS Garmin units were most prevalent and the 496 … Read more
There's a dirty little secret in the helicopter emergency medical services (EMS) industry: management pressure to fly in bad conditions is raking in profits while killing crews. Medicare reimbursement rules and lax regulation that fueled the industry’s growth over the last two decades also provide an incentive to fly substandard helicopters in poor weather conditions. … Read more
Watching Michael Vick on a 60 Minutes video yesterday reminded me of how few stories of redemption exist about felons who’ve spent time in Federal prison. Generally they are the pariahs of society who can never get more than a minimum wage job and eventually end up back in prison. Once convicted, society puts felons … Read more
The FAA announced this afternoon that they are forming a New York Airspace Working Group to review procedures and recommend safety improvements for flights operating over the Hudson and East Rivers. This comes in the wake of a mid air collision that resulted in the crash of an airplane and helicopter over the Hudson River … Read more
For better or worse, modern technology assures there’s a video camera trained on virtually every event that occurs. Not surprising, NBC has released video shot by a tourist of the actual moment of a mid air collision over the Hudson River between a Piper Saratoga airplane and a Eurocopter 350 helicopter. While the video will … Read more
Ever find yourself in the cockpit punching GPS buttons multiple times to get it to do what you want? Our recent GPS survey found that more than half of readers have difficulty some of the time getting a GPS to do what they want. I spend hundreds of hours each year teaching only in aircraft … Read more
The first airplane to pitch a tent arrived at Oshkosh yesterday, more than a week before the start of the show, according to a Twitter message I received. Now that’s planning ahead! But don’t despair. If you haven’t already made plans to go to Oshkosh, let me emphatically say IT IS NOT TOO LATE TO … Read more
It's not often that a new piece of avionics comes out that changes a paradigm. The introduction of GPS certainly did that in the 1990s as did the Avidyne Entegra and G1000 in 2003 and 2004 respectively. I just flew behind the Aspen Avionics EFD1000 Pro and frankly I think it is in the same … Read more
Would you be willing to pay less for your next airline ticket in exchange for flying in the “Standing Section” of the aircraft? Note that today in not April Fools Day and this is not part of a funny MAD TV skit. It’s a real proposal and, if Ryanair has their way, you’ll get to … Read more
Today, Aurora Flight Services announced that they have successfully demonstrated fully autonomous takeoffs and landings in their Cessna 337 aircraft. The flights were conducted with a safety pilot and test engineer on board near the company’s Manassas, Virginia headquarters. The company manufactures state-of-the-art unmanned aerial systems and components for the scientific research, defense and homeland … Read more