Features

My friend and I were flying his SR22 into Denver’s Centennial Airport. I was handling the radio. We were VFR at 13,500 feet when Center handed us off to Denver Approach. I checked in, then followed up with a request: Me: In case we need it, can I expect a Bravo clearance? Approach: No. A […]

Last week we asked whether airlines should get airspace priority and a thin majority of AVweb readers disagreed with that premise.

I owned my little two-seat Grumman AA1-B for 22 years and loved it. But after getting my instrument rating, I realized it just wasn’t practical for IFR travel. So I eventually sold the Grumman to a friend (who formed a partnership with another pilot) and upgraded to a 1954 V-tail Bonanza, which I also loved. […]

To no one’s surprise, the majority of our poll respondents want a new funding method for the FAA that might take some of the politics out of its budget allotments.

Stop me if you’re heard this one. Many years ago, a foreign student with a heavy accent contacts air traffic control over the east coast of Florida saying he’s lost. The controller gives him a transponder code and tries to get a general idea of where he is in relation to coastal landmarks. After a […]

We asked if readers felt safe in the air and despite all the gloomy headlines about incursions, mental health and flight delays, we overwhelmingly are quite comfortable in our element.

On a recent trip from the West Coast to the Midwest, I’d just checked in with Center after a couple of sectors in NorCal. A few minutes later, the controller gave us a climb to our final altitude, FL230. Then, after another few minutes: Center: “Uh, 40N, did I give you FL230? I know I […]

An important part of the Aviation Consumer magazine Used Aircraft Report monthly feature is the accident scan section. For any used model, a look at the most recent 100 wrecks that make the NTSB database is the same as it’s been for years: Pilots are wrecking aircraft for the same reasons they always have. We […]

Years ago, I was a student pilot on a night flight with my instructor. We flew from Palo Alto across San Francisco Bay and over the hills to Livermore for some touch-and-go landings. After several turns in the pattern, we headed back over the hills to find the bay covered with a thick marine layer. […]

High-end avionics upgrades require real planning—from deciding where to place backup instruments to keeping tabs on the shop doing the work. A misstep in the project can send an otherwise good upgrade in the wrong direction. One recent flagship Garmin upgrade in a Cessna T210 went exceptionally well because the aircraft’s patient owner stayed involved […]