Piloting - Page 8

The numbers vary from year to year and from flight school to flight school, but it is generally said that about 80 percent of students pilots drop out before they get their pilots licenses. So what happens to those 80 percent of students? The reasons students succeed or fail at flight training are varied. Everyone

If you’ve ever spent any time around airports, especially General Aviation ones, you’ll probably have noticed aircraft come into land, briefly touch the runway before taking off once again. This maneuver is known as touch & go landing. A rapid combination of two maneuvers, a touch & go landing involves the landing and immediate take-off

Have you ever been on an airline flight that did a go-around? Chances are quite a few passengers were freaked out by the experience as the plane seemed like it was making a normal landing, but the pilot suddenly put it into a power climb. It provides the pilot a way of abandoning a landing

Pilot training and testing are unlike the exams most people remember from school. The closest experience most people have is when they get their driver’s license. To get your driver’s license, you usually have to sit for a multiple-choice written exam and then get in the car with an examiner and drive around the neighborhood.

One of the most misunderstood jobs in aviation is that of the DPE—the Designated Pilot Examiner. For many student pilots, the DPE that gives their checkride and (hopefully) hands them a license is the first contact they have with the “real” FAA. The problem with that is that DPEs do not actually work for the

Flight physicals can be a source of anxiety for many pilots. For example, should you list your anxiety about a flight physical as a medical condition? However, flight physicals can be straightforward, and any issues found don’t have to be the end of the story. A flight physical is a generic term used to describe

Aviation is a world of acronyms. If you’re researching flight training, the term “CFI” is one of the first that you’ll hear. What is a CFI, a CFII, or an MEI? Today, let’s look at some of these flight training terms and talk about the people behind them. CFI stands for Certified Flight Instructor. The

Aerodynamics involves the study of airflow, and we often think of the air moving over the wing to make lift or the drag produced by air moving over the fuselage. But it also looks at the airflow around the whole airplane, and sometimes that changes during flight. Ground effect refers to the change in the

One of the most incredible advancements in aviation has been the introduction of satellite navigation. But GPS technology alone isn’t enough—the regular GPS signals aren’t accurate enough to guide a plane to a safe landing during bad weather. So the FAA created a system to make GPS better and more accurate, called WAAS. WAAS stands

Most aviation buffs know that if an airplane flies too slowly, it will stall. If there isn’t enough air flowing over the wings, the airplane cannot fly. A ‘high speed stall’ sounds contradictory. However, it’s very real… Contrary to popular belief, an airplane can stall at nearly any airspeed—including very fast ones. When the plane stalls