Matt Claiborne

Around aviation, you may hear the term MRO often. The term has been generalized to refer to many different organizations in aviation, but all of them revolve around the maintenance of aircraft.  MRO stands for maintenance, repair, and overhaul. This label is used in aviation to indicate a major maintenance facility, be it part of […]

The speed an aircraft flies is one of those things that seems like it should be simple, and yet it isn’t easy. In a car, your speedometer simply tells you how fast you are traveling between Point A and Point B. But in a plane, many variables must be considered before you can figure that […]

Several medical factors affect pilots while flying aircraft. Most of these have to do with operating at high altitudes, or medical considerations that could affect their ability to operate the plane safely.  What Is Spatial Disorientation? Spatial disorientation, on the other hand, comes as a result of flight itself. Spatial disorientation occurs when the pilot’s […]

As professional pilots progress through their careers, they earn increasingly higher grades of certificates or pilot licenses. In the United States, pilot certification is handled by the Federal Aviation Administration. What is an ATP? ATP stands for airline transport pilot. The pinnacle of a pilot’s career is when they earn their ATP. The airline transport […]

Weather is the most crucial factor affecting airport operations. At towered airports around the world, air traffic controllers report on wind and visibility conditions so that arriving pilots know what to expect. But what do pilots do when they arrive at non-towered (also known as uncontrolled) airports? The answer is that many airfields have automated […]

Airports are complex and dynamic places. Just a slight wind shift can change the runway in use, and the traffic patterns planes must fly. Pilots are expected to enter these changing environs fully abreast of what is going on and where. How do they do it?  What Is ATIS in Aviation? The answer is the […]

At first glance, the altimeter in an airplane seems like a relatively simple instrument. And it does work in a simple way, but not like most people would think it would. Pilots need to understand their instruments inside and out to get the right information out of them, and that’s especially true with something as […]

Hey, who are you calling heavy? While all pilots like to treat their aircraft like the ladies they are, thankfully planes are much more accepting of bluntly descriptive language. What Does “Heavy” Mean? Aircraft are classified based on their maximum takeoff weights (MTOW). A “heavy” aircraft is one whose takeoff weight is more than 300,000 […]

One of the essential factors in aviation weather is flight visibility. Visibility is the only legal weather requirement that must be met when landing after an instrument approach. If the visibility isn’t at least the minimum published on the approach plate, the pilot can’t land. What Does RVR Stand For? RVR is one way of […]

Modern small aircraft pilots can be forgiven for taking the “direct to” button on their GPS for granted. The ability to navigate straight to any point on the planet is a powerful tool in the cockpit. GPS has brought this technology to nearly every plane in the sky, but the concept has been around for […]