Short Final

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...

Short Final: Name Change

Many years ago I was flying my Cessna 182 from the San Francisco Bay Area east toward Columbia (O22) in the foothills of the...

Short Final: Other Right

Flying into the Class D Purdue University Airport (home of the Purdue Boilermakers), I heard tower say, “N1234 enter right downwind for Runway 28.” A...
It's a frustrating theme in GA crashes but how do we improve basic decision making?

Featured Video

Best Of The Web: Gliding To Corsica

It's been dream of Swiss glider pilot Yves Gerster to fly his motorglider from the Italian Alps to the island of Corsica and back...