Insights, updates, and aviation stories.
The descent has to be timed precisely. Too steep and the aircraft arrives over the runway too fast, the approach angle too aggressive to land safely. Too shallow and the pilot floats above the correct glidepath, consuming runway they cannot afford to waste. Somewhere between those two outcomes is the correct rate of descent, and […]
There is a moment on every cross-country flight when a pilot has been heads-down in the cockpit — managing the radio, checking fuel, working through the cruise checklist — and finally looks up to find they are not quite sure where they are. They know their heading: the heading indicator has been showing 075° the […]
There is a moment in every flight, usually during the descent, when a pilot reaches down to a small knob on the instrument panel and gives it a deliberate twist. To a passenger watching, it looks like a minor adjustment, barely worth noticing. What the pilot is actually doing is calibrating the altimeter to local […]
The turn coordinator is the most visually unusual instrument in the six-pack, and the one that most reliably confuses students when they first encounter it. It looks like two instruments sharing a single face: the upper half shows a miniature aircraft that banks left or right to indicate the rate of a turn, and the […]
Every pilot scanning the cockpit in flight is actually scanning two separate groups of instruments at once. The six-pack on the left side of the panel answers questions about where the aircraft is going: how fast, how high, which direction, whether level. The engine instruments on the right side of the panel answer a different […]
For decades, learning to fly meant learning to read a panel full of round dials. Each instrument did exactly one thing: the airspeed indicator showed airspeed, the altimeter showed altitude, the attitude indicator showed attitude. The pilot built a complete picture of the flight by scanning all six, over and over, combining the individual readings […]
Every aircraft has two speeds the pilot must never cross. One is the stall speed: fly too slowly and the wings stop generating lift, the aircraft stops flying, and the nose pitches down abruptly. The other is the never-exceed speed: fly too fast and the forces acting on the airframe exceed what it was built […]
When Kim Kardashian boards her Gulfstream G650ER, she isn’t stepping onto a standard charter. She’s entering a $150 million flying extension of her personal brand: cashmere headrests, custom blond wood paneling, SKIMS-branded slippers on every seat, and a strict no-spray-tan policy to keep the upholstery pristine. This is Kim Air, one of the most recognizable […]
A private jet is one of the most practical investments a celebrity can make. For the 30 names on this list, it is also one of the most scrutinized. Welcome to the era of flight tracking, carbon footprint leaderboards, and cease-and-desist letters sent to college students. Here is how Hollywood’s biggest names travel when no […]
Most celebrity couples share a jet. Jay-Z and Beyoncé have two — and one of them was a Father’s Day gift. In 2012, four months after the birth of Blue Ivy Carter, Beyoncé gave her husband a Bombardier Challenger 850 valued at $40 million. Not a watch, not a car, not a piece of jewelry. […]