Home Features Short Final

Short Final

Short Final: Left Turn

I recently heard this at Detroit Metropolitan Airport: Tower: “Airliner 123, left turn to heading 185. Cleared for takeoff 21R.” Pilot: “Right turn 185, cleared for...

Short Final: Mind Reading

On a recent trip from the West Coast to the Midwest, I’d just checked in with Center after a couple sectors in NorCal. A...

Short Final: Job Hunting

I work at a TRACON with a busy satellite airport nearby. Over the years it’s gotten rather tedious to get asked for higher so...

Short Final: Destination Direct

Tooling along from Florida to Massachusetts one sunny afternoon, apparently ATC had some sort of computer hiccup. Atlanta Center: “American 123, Atlanta Center; our system...

Short Final: Hold Short

I was flying into Dulles a couple of years ago with my single-engine Comanche. Traffic was landing to the north and I touched down...

Short Final: Pugachev’s Cobra

Returning to Palo Alto airport from the East on a short flight through the busy Bay Area airspace, I was admiring Mount Diablo at...

Short Final: 007

I recently had a long flight from Somerset, New Jersey, to Houston Southwest Texas. I don’t remember which approach controller it was, but when...

Short Final: We Have Oscar

My wife and I were on a PALS flight (PALS = Patient Airlift Services) and we had an Afghanistan war refugee and her helper-dog,...

Short Final: Blimp Traffic

Several years ago, I was flying into St. Petersburg during the NCAA Final Four. There was quite a bit of traffic and the Goodyear...

Short Final: Mistaken Identity

I fly a rather obscure aircraft for the Coast Guard: the HC-144, a twin turboprop about the size of a Dash 8. With the...
I was hoping I could get ChatGPT to write scintillating aviation stories and blogs. It basically said do it yourself.

Featured Video

OSIRIS-REx Mission Explained

After a seven-year mission to a remote carbonaceous asteroid called Bennu, a small sample container blazed through the Earth's atmosphere Sunday morning returning the...