Blog

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 […]

From Captain Sully’s famous splashdown in the Hudson River to Malaysia Flight 370 to the many other crashes and disappearances that make the headlines, you’d be forgiven for thinking flying’s incredibly dangerous – but the truth is anything but. In fact, however, flying is not just safe but one of the safest ways to travel […]

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 […]

The future is now, especially in the world of aeronautics, which is why it should come as no surprise that the fighter jets of the future are already in development with powers and abilities that we cannot yet quantify, or perhaps even imagine. So what does the future hold? It can be hard to make […]

Few things capture the imagination of aviation lovers quite like aerobatic teams. The United States has the Blue Angels, and the United Kingdom has the Red Arrows, but where did this British band of aerobatic daredevils come from? From Henry V’s legendary longbow men to Robin Hood to the Powell/Pressberger “Archers” filmmaking duo, archery symbolism […]

There are many types of pilot license issued by the FAA. Many people are familiar with the private and commercial licenses, but you might not realize that there are several others you can get, such as the sport pilot certificate. The sport pilot license was created to provide an easy and less expensive way for […]

Whether you’re flying into or out of an area that is subject to a lot of cold weather or are traveling during winter, the risk of your plane becoming an icicle is real. Thankfully, deicing measures can melt and thaw that ice and get you ready for takeoff. Airplane deicer is made of a simple […]

For decades engineers have been trying to combine the best qualities of helicopters and airplanes to create an airplane that can hover. As a result, different types of vertical-take-off-and-landing have been produced, some more successful than others. Both airplanes and helicopters offer impressive capabilities, but they are, in some cases at least, mutually exclusive. Helicopters […]