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Short Final

Short Final: Consider This

The aviation safety culture can be brutal and unforgiving. Consider this sage advice from Angus Kydd, one of the instructors at my home-base airport,...

Short Final: Numbers Game

During the early days of World War II in the Pacific, the Curtiss P-40 served heroically well, despite its shortcomings against the Japanese Mitsubishi...

Short Final: Hold Your Horsepower

From sister publication IFR Magazine’s "On the Air" letters page: A female tower controller at a flight-school airport was known to have a sultry voice...

Short Final: Retirement Planning

From AVweb reader Erik Klavon: After an unusually long period of silence on a Denver center frequency, I heard the following exchange:Unknown pilot: “Still there?”Denver...

Short Final: Don’t Ask!

My old Bonanza was a very capable airplane for instrument flying, but my panel avionics did not include an FAA-blessed GPS navigator. My Garmin...

Short Final: Pick Your Poison

In the 1980s, when I worked at Daniel Webster College in Nashua, New Hampshire, it had an innovative flight training program with a diverse...

Short Final: Age Before Duty

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...

Short Final: Identity Crisis

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...

Short Final: Coastal Navigation

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...

Short Final: Controller/Pilot Telepathy

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....
It's easy to take all the SpaceX rocket explosions lightly until someone you know is likely to be a passenger on one.

Featured Video

Video Of The Week: Will There Be Smoke?

Aviation Consumer's Larry Anglisano talks with Mark Welch as he prepares to power up an elaborate panel in a Van's RV-10 under construction in...