Matt Claiborne

There’s a lot of talk about which military branch is best for pilots. The United States Air Force, Army, Navy or Marines? Which one do you think is the best match for your personality and skill set? Do you want to fly jets like an F-18 Hornet or be a part of a more versatile

What most people describe as a jet engine usually encompasses several different engine designs. In the early days, the turbojet dominated the skies and changed aviation forever. It is, after all, where the term “jet” came from. But in the years since, the technology has been tweaked and improved. The jet engine you find on

The National Airspace System is complex. Getting your first pilot’s license is sometimes called your “license to learn.” For all the technicalities involved in flying a plane, manipulation of the controls is the easy part. SIDs and STARs are one element in a much larger system of routes that airplanes fly. SIDs, or Standard Instrument

Besides making airplanes look cool, designers also want to make them fly well. To do this, they work hard to make airplanes that are stable. Many little things keep an airplane pointed in the direction you want it to go, some of which you may have never thought about or noticed. Keel effect is one

Turning an airplane seems very easy, even when you’re sitting in the cockpit. Move the control yoke or stick to the left or right, and the plane will follow. Planes are designed to be stable and easy to fly, after all. But when you take a deep dive into the aerodynamics of what keeps a plane

Knowing how high you are is an essential part of a pilot’s job, right? But did you realize that pilots are concerned with many different types of altitude, not just how high off the ground they are? Pressure altitude is one such example. So what exactly is pressure altitude? Instead of referencing something physical, like sea

Few things strike more fear into the hearts and minds of pilots than the dreaded flat spin. But what exactly is a flat spin, what causes it, and how do you recover from it? A flat spin is a dangerous flight condition that can be impossible to recover from. Thankfully, it’s not likely to happen

Before the computer-aided, laser-guided smart bombs of today, quick-thinking and well-trained bombardiers had to use math to calculate their bomb drops. At the dawn of aviation, it was easy enough in slow-moving fabric-on-frame biplanes. But when the fast-moving high-altitude bombers of World War II came along, the challenge required new technology. Bombsights were devices that

Many people have heard of the NTSB, but few realize the importance of this government organization. So what is the NTSB, what do they do, and how do they do it? The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is the US government body in charge of investigating not only airplane crashes, but accidents in other transportation sectors

Safety Management Systems (SMS) have been adopted by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) as the gold standard in effectively managing risk. The need for aviation companies to have a Safety Management System became apparent as safety cultures have shifted away from reactive risk management towards proactive and predictive risk