I Learned About Flying From That

After an annual inspection, condition inspection, or even an oil change, the airplane needs to be flown to make sure it’s operating at 100%. And if you’re the owner, you’ve got to do that flying. One pilot did a simple check after factory maintenance, but on his way home, he got a surprise: smoke in the cockpit.  

This week is an amazing tale of a pilot doing something most would never want to do: ferry an airplane across an ocean. Meet the pilot, who in an unfamiliar plane, was forced to put it down in the Pacific and hear what he learned from the experience. 

Dr. Stan Markus is an owner and lover of antique aircraft. And when the engine quit on his Stearman, away from his home airport, he only had a few seconds to find a suitable landing field that would not be a hazard to those on the ground, himself, or his airplane. 

A recent equipment upgrade created an erroneous incompatibility with fuel flow sensing for pilot and social media influencer Kay Hall. Hear how it unfolded in this episode.

Landing in a parking lot on a private pilot checkride provides a powerful lesson in preparation and humility. Dave Schoen  shares a story from his student pilot days.

Joey and Rachel Brown give their Cessna 150 a workout flying from California to Florida and back. It was all good until the final leg, when headwinds and downdrafts exceeded aircraft performance and they were no longer able to maintain altitude (even in a climb configuration). Fortunately, avoiding get-home-itis made for a happy ending.

Flying is unforgiving, soaring even less so. Hear how glider pilot Bob Katz turned a loss of lift out of range of his airport into a picture perfect off airfield landing on a golf course after his Plan A and Plan B didn't work out. But good outcomes of unplanned situations don't happen by chance, every flight is an opportunity to rehearse a "what if" scenario.

A low time instrument pilot launches into IMC with a gradually failing vacuum pump and learns a lesson about proficiency and instrument cross-checking. The wisdom to invite another pilot along as a second set of eyes in the cockpit likely changed the outcome of this lesson.

British pilot Mark Brooke has flown many different airplanes, from light singles and 727s for DHL to the Dassault Falcon 7X and even a Bucker Jungmeister. Hear how he handled a maintenance faux pas in a Beech Baron and his own faux pas on a downwind landing in a Tiger Moth.

Turbulence and windshear drove CFII Anna Serbinenko and her students to attempt a difficult diversion. Then, a search and rescue crew runs into trouble when they decide to push for their home airport following a hydraulic failure.

With a failing engine and unforgiving terrain all around, flight instructor Mark Henshall had a decision to make about whether or not to turn back to the runway. Also, picking up a mayday from a fellow pilot comes to a difficult end only to be followed by a surprising revelation.

Finding the right teacher can be complicated, but when a flight instructor falls asleep on a student’s first-ever lesson it raises red flags. Also, low visibility and a failure to communicate lead to a head-to-head close call in the pattern.

A pilot faces an instrument failure in the clouds and recalls how a decision to head home in the dark—despite having never flown at night—led to a harrowing experience in the pattern.

Experienced pilot Al Hewitt was proficient, current, and ready to go for a short IFR trip he’d made many times before, but when he broke out of the clouds on a familiar approach nothing was as expected.

Wanting to build flight time and under pressure from another pilot, a young aviator decided to take a jump plane up for one last flight in spite of dangerously low fuel indications and the approaching sunset.

During a night proficiency flight, a pilot was practicing partial panel IFR when he had an emergency he did not expect.

Pilot Victor Vogel was left with only a flashlight and a pencil following a total electrical system failure in his Beech Sierra—and he was headed straight for the nation's capital region.

Pilot Scott Tomlinson hopped into his RV-6, ready to take his girlfriend on a flying date to Ocracoke Island. But a skipped part of the preflight just about ruined their day together.

An Air Force Warthog pilot suffered an engine failure during a training mission, but was his course of action the right one?

Pilot Charles Turner witnessed an accident and tried to save one of the occupants. It took him 20 years to share the story, and where it led him.

Sometimes we conduct a careful preflight, and we still don’t find everything that might go wrong under the cowl. This Bonanza pilot discovered fuel all over the engine—after returning to the airport.

A pilot practicing aerobatics nearly lost a critical part of the airframe of his project Pitts S-1, a problem that couldn't be found during preflight.

Instructor Josh Harnagel acquired a Beech B36TC Bonanza and was flying on a work trip when the turbocharger failed, leading to an off-airport landing.

Pilot and instructor Doug Rozendaal recounts stories of flying the Douglas DC-3, Beech 18, and Cessna 402 across the upper Midwest for a freight operation—and key lessons on avoiding or mitigating icing encounters..

An expert pilot in the airshow and movie business recalls a shoot in Hawaii when a trio of cables appeared where they had not been before, and almost killed him.