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Once upon a time there was an airline that was among America’s most affordable and iconic, that began as an air mail service and grew to service international flights, and then, poof! It was gone. This’s Pan Am Airlines’ story. In a way, Pan Am’s antiquity makes its story that much more compelling. In life,

We are so used to many of the conventions of modern airplanes that we often don’t give them a second thought. That said, the moment someone stops to ask you “why do airplanes have round windows instead of square ones?” you start to wonder why you didn’t wonder that yourself. In retrospect, it seems like

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

Trump University. Trump’s Atlantic City Taj Mahal. Trump Steaks. The New Jersey Generals USFL team, and eventually the whole USFL. A lot of Trump enterprises have come and gone – yet the story of one Trump airline “trumps” them all. Yes, Donald Trump owned his own airline at one point, Trump Airlines or, more properly,

As a mother, you always want to make sure you do whatever’s best for your baby. But what can or should you do when forced to choose between your baby’s health and an airline flight? How soon is it before your baby can safely fly? This is a difficult question to answer given how unpredictable

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

In March of 2020, Flybe ceased to fly or be. It was the latest casualty of a British economy that was undergoing massive changes pre-Brexit as well as a global health crisis and will only continue to do so now that Brexit has occurred. The most well-known among these casualties was Thomas Cook, the travel

Shows like Airplane Repo make the business look exciting. Who wouldn’t want to be able to confront the rich and famous before flying off into the sunset, their private plane in tow? Of course, actual airplane repo jobs are a little more difficult than that. For one thing, there’s a lot more to it than

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