Table of contents for April 2017 in Flying

There’s no overstating the importance of airports to America’s air transportation system. Without them, aviation ceases to exist. When local officials decide to close an airport, it vanishes forever. The FAA’s surprise settlement agreement in the decadeslong legal fight over the future of Santa Monica Airport in Southern California should be a wake-up call to us all. Federal and city officials in January announced an agreement to allow the important general aviation gateway to close forever at the end of 2028. But that wasn’t the shocking news. As part of the settlement, the Santa Monica city council gained the right to immediately shorten the runway from 4,973 feet to 3,500 feet, a move that will significantly alter the character of Santa Monica Airport by preventing most large jets from flying…

Growing up, I heard people say, “Sometimes you just have to learn the hard way.” We learn many valuable lessons in life this way after realizing that our decisions and actions (or lack thereof ) lead to undesirable outcomes. For some situations, this is the only impactful way to affect a change in behavior — an eye-opening experience that teaches us a lesson we’ll never forget. But after the check ride, we’re on our own with what many refer to as a “license to learn.” While this philosophy rings true to a certain extent, it’s not necessarily safe or practical for pilots to experience an unexpected, scary or embarrassing event in order to learn every real-world skill. Much of this skill will simply come with experience outside the confines of…

I should probably stick to telling flying stories, but occasionally I get so worked up that I can’t resist taking off on what I see as some new wacko FAA-mandated requirement or procedure. So it’s no surprise that the agency’s current “initiative” (in Bureaucratese) of replacing the Practical Test Standards with the Airman Certification Standards has me seeing red. Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you probably know that the ACS has taken the place of the PTS, which 40 years ago replaced the Flight Test Guides … and there was nothing wrong with that test, except, in those simpler times, it wasn’t abbreviated FTG. If you’ve listened to me whine, you know I’m no longer a designated pilot examiner, but I’m a pretty good (well, OK, awesome) pilot…

Thirsting for knowledge, I Googled why we drive on one side of the road rather than the other. I found a lot of obvious rubbish about quarrelsome knights and Roman charioteers. I suspect that what really happened was Henry Ford flipped a quarter and William Morris a shilling, and they came up different. Nevertheless, I propose to offer an explanation of why the pilot of an airplane sits in the left seat, and why we normally make left turns in the traffic pattern. Actually, this theory is not original with me. It comes from Javier Arango, a collector, student and flier of World War I-era airplanes, who delivered a paper on it to the 2016 meeting of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots in Anaheim, California. He does not claim…

Despite its notoriety as the largest aviation event in the United States, EAA’s AirVenture this year expects to take one more giant leap for mankind — the aviation lovers among them, anyway — by celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Apollo space missions. And what better way to celebrate a space flight’s golden anniversary than by holding an Oshkosh reunion attended by as many lunar-landing crew members as the famed Theatre in the Woods will hold. So far, five astronauts — Frank Borman of Apollo 8, Walt Cunningham of Apollo 7, Fred Haise of Apollo 13, Jim Lovell of Apollo 8 and 13, and Al Worden of Apollo 15 — have confirmed they’ll attend. EAA says it expects more Apollo crew members will join the evening program on July 28.…

Late in August 2015, a 55-year-old Pennsylvania lawyer bought a 1981 A36 Bonanza. A private pilot with an instrument rating and around 800 hours of flight time, he had, according to a friend, “a lot” of IFR experience in a fixed-gear, fixed-pitch Piper Cherokee. The Bonanza, however, equipped with a Garmin 530 EFIS navigator and a flight director, was more airplane than he was used to. He quickly obtained a “complex” checkout — six hours in flight and an hour and a half of ground instruction — from an instructor whom he knew. The instructor showed him how to set up the Garmin for IFR approaches, but the approaches they flew together were in VMC, without a hood. The instructor cautioned the pilot not to fly in actual IFR conditions…

It is always hard to know about dogs and airplanes. I know how I feel about both — I like them — but will a dog like flying in an airplane? This is a chronicle of one airplane and three dogs. Ubu was a Lab-shepherd mix, not known for loyalty or obedience. I attributed his wanderlust to the fact that he wasn’t “fixed.” He came to riding in the Cheyenne my wife, Cathy, and I owned in his middle age and after several flights in the holds of various airliners while cooped up in a box. I assumed he was such a mellow passenger because his previous experiences had been so unpleasant that he was grateful. Ubu’s aircraft behavior was impeccable, except for one minor quirk and one slightly embarrassing…

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Airplanes, pilots and airports: Where you find two, you’ll find the third. In my airplane-obsessed childhood, this indisputable fact led to an early acquaintance with every airfield within a 20-mile radius. These were quiet country fields, mind you, but every so often a Cessna would drop in to do a couple of touch-and-goes, or maybe even stay awhile, in which case I’d shyly approach the pilot and ask inane questions about his bird in hopes of being invited to take a look inside — or even, be still my heart, take a quick spin around the patch. Later, once I started taking flight lessons, my circle of familiarity expanded to perhaps 40 miles, and I started noticing the differences in layout, amenities, activity and even culture between the various airports.…

The Arrow’s oil had just been changed for the first time since my ownership. And the landing gear had been cycled a few times to confirm the microswitch that activated the flashing auto-gear-extension disable light had been successfully readjusted. The final tweaking involved a flight test to determine if the engine was indeed not quite producing full takeoff power as per the rpm indication or if the tachometer itself was lying. Simple stuff. But before we even turned a prop blade, my mechanic friend and I were blindsided by something completely unexpected. Just outside Tally Ho Aviation’s hangar, Kari Sorenson hopped onto the Piper’s wing and then plopped down onto the copilot’s seat. His eyebrows raised, Kari looked at me and asked, “What was that squeak?” “What squeak?” I replied,…