Aerotime

APRIL 3, 2025

The automatic pilot (autopilot) has to be one of aviations finest technological inventions. Largely gone are the days when pilots had to manually control their aircraft from engine start-up to shut down by keeping their hands rigidly fixed on the controls at all times.

Weight-Shift-Control

Pilot Institute

JULY 11, 2025

Why do jet pilots talk about speed in terms of Mach number? Why don’t they use Indicated Airspeed just like the pilots who fly slower aircraft? Pilots switch to Mach number at high altitudes to avoid inaccuracies in IAS due to compressibility effects. And why should pilots be wary of Mach 1? Here’s why. Here’s why.

True Airspeed

Plane and Pilot

NOVEMBER 10, 2024

Sometimes it’s emotional—the Beech Starship, what few of them are still in the wild, inevitably wow viewers of both the pilot and nonpilot persuasion. In fact, the unusual pitot-tube location—it peeks out from the center of the prop spinner—was chosen to reduce fuselage-to-wing connections. But successful? Not at all.

Airplanes

AV Web

MAY 20, 2025

If you ask a pilot, Have you ever panicked while flying? Even Famous Pilots Panic Lets look at a famous pilot who panicked. The young, still-learning cub steamboat pilot was Samuel Clemens. Twains pilot boss played a trick on him to teach him a lesson on how to overcome panic. Just what is this thing called panic?

Runway

AV Web

OCTOBER 8, 2024

The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) has responded to numerous requests from members for advice on how best to prepare an aircraft for surviving extreme weather, such as the hurricanes that are savaging the U.S. Check the Pilots Operating Handbook for best advice on whether to set the brakes or not.

Pitot Tube

Northstar VFR

OCTOBER 27, 2024

Friends and fellow pilots who had gone before me and passed their commercial checkrides all commented that the commercial checkride was the easiest regarding the oral exam and the practical (flying) portion. About halfway through the conversation, the examiner started asking about the pitot-static system.

Longitudinal Axis

Plane and Pilot

NOVEMBER 19, 2024

Out in the practice area, I did some of my favorite beyond-ACS but still normal category exercises—alternating steep turns with full aileron deflection, extended low speed flight, and Dutch rolls to 45-degree bank each way, again with full aileron deflection. I’m focusing on the old pilot part, not the bold pilot.

Pitot Tube