The airplane, manufactured in 1960, had been updated with, among other things, a couple of flight data recorders. Their memory cards survived the crash and allowed National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigators to trace in minute detail the events that led to it.

The 1,765-hour, instrument-rated commercial pilot, 43, an insurance agent and entrepreneur, had earlier flown a longtime friend from Fayetteville to Stuttgart, Arkansas. The trip took an hour. The friend, who had previously co-owned a Cirrus with the accident pilot and knew him well, reported that the flight was uneventful and that the pilot took off to return to Drake Field in Fayetteville (KFYV) 15 minutes after landing. He said that the pilot had told him that the airplane was fully fueled before they left Fayetteville. 

It was late dusk and a full moon had just risen when the Bonanza, cruising at 4,500 feet, approached Drake Field. Eighteen miles out, it began a gradual descent at about 425 feet per minute. At 10 miles, the pilot called the tower and was cleared to land. 

• READ MORE: Nothing Short of a Fatal Mismatch

When the Bonanza was around 3 miles from Drake, its speed decreased and its rate of descent increased. Six hundred feet above the ground, it started a left turn toward an open field, but before it reached the field its left wing struck a tree and it fell, out of control, to the ground. The airplane came to rest upright but fragmented. There was no fire.

NTSB investigators found nothing wrong with the engine, and there was ample fuel in the main tanks. The auxiliary tanks were empty. The fuel selector was set to the left main.

A decade or two ago an accident like this would have fallen into the “for unknown reasons” category. The electronic data recording devices, however, led the NTSB straight to the probable cause—”the pilot’s mismanagement of the airplane’s fuel system.” 

In order to understand how a man described by his old friend as a “really good” pilot who was “knowledgeable” and “particular” about how he operated an airplane, one must first understand the fuel system of the M35.

The airplane had two main fuel tanks of 25 gallons each and two optional auxiliary tanks of 10 gallons each for a total capacity of 70 gallons. Its 260 hp engine burned around 14 gph in cruise. The fuel injection system of the IO-470, like all Continental fuel injection systems, pumped more fuel than the engine needed and sent the unused portion back to a tank. According to the airplane handbook, the vapor return amounted to 10 gph. If a main tank was selected, the vapor return went to it. If the aux tanks were selected, which fed simultaneously, the vapor fuel went to the left main. 

This arrangement had several implications. One was that even though the engine was burning only 13 or 14 gph, the 20 gallons of auxiliary fuel would be gone in less than 50 minutes. Another was that if the aux tanks were selected before there was space for the return fuel in the left main, the return fuel would be vented overboard. The POH discouraged switching to the auxiliary tanks before the left main was half empty.

• READ MORE: A Cautionary Tale About Pilot Freelancing

 The POH instructed the pilot to take off on the left main (and, without explanation, not to take off with less than 13 gallons in each main). On the trip to Stuttgart, the pilot actually appears to have taken off on the right main and switched to the left six minutes later. After 26 minutes, he selected the aux tanks and continued to feed from them for the remainder of the flight, presumably returning to a main tank shortly before landing. At Stuttgart he had about 54 or 55 gallons of fuel remaining, of which around 8 were in the aux tanks and 24 in the left main.

On the return flight, he burned fuel from the right tank for the first 49 minutes. He then made a fateful decision: He selected the aux tanks. 

Seven minutes later, return fuel from the aux tanks had filled the left main and presumably begun to run out the vent. After another six minutes the fuel pressure began to fluctuate, and then it disappeared entirely. The Bonanza was now 1,400 feet above the runway elevation and several miles out. The remaining 40 seconds of electronic data showed no restoration of fuel pressure.

Evidentally the pilot had selected the left main and was attempting a restart when time and altitude ran out. The NTSB did not speculate about why the engine failed to restart. Presumably there was quite a bit of air in the lines. The pilot did maintain control of the airplane, and although he slowed it to minimum speed before impact, he did not stall it.

The NTSB report credits the pilot with 377 hours in “this make and model,” but it is silent on an important question: Was the fuel system on his previous Bonanza differently configured from that on this one? In an online post, one of the pilot’s associates stated that the Bonanza he was flying “was a new one to him” and “an unfamiliar airplane” but does not say in what way it was unfamiliar.

If the Bonanza he had previously owned lacked the optional auxiliary tanks, it’s possible that the pilot had not yet developed a set of habitual operating procedures for them. If he had, he might not have made the mistake of switching to the aux tanks, which contained only a few gallons of fuel, with little time remaining in the flight and with almost no room for return fuel in the left main. Nor, perhaps—assuming that he had not forgotten how little fuel was left in the aux tanks—would he have placed reliance on the ancient float-type fuel quantity senders, which were prone to drop out entirely at the seldom-visited, near-empty ends of their potentiometers, to keep him from running a tank dry. 

• READ MORE: Two Fatal Cases of the Simply Inexperienced

Maybe, because switching to the fuller main is part of the airplane’s prelanding checklist, he performed a mental calculation—8 gallons in the aux tanks, 10 minutes to landing, reduced flow in the descent—and concluded that there would still be fuel in the aux tanks when he ran his prelanding checks. But in that case he may have forgotten that fuel was being drawn from the aux tanks at nearly double the rate that the engine was using it.

All airplanes have quirks. The Bonanza POH provided an accurate and concise description of the fuel system but did not trace every hypothetical path from a feature to a problem. It’s up to the pilot—especially one becoming acquainted with an unfamiliar airplane—to ensure that a quirk doesn’t turn into a pitfall.

Note: This article is based on the National Transportation Safety Board’s report of the accident and is intended to bring the issues raised to our readers’ attention. It is not intended to judge or reach any definitive conclusions about the ability or capacity of any person, living or dead, or any aircraft or accessory.

This column first appeared in the September Issue 950 of the FLYING print edition.

The post It’s Up to Pilot to Ensure Quirk Doesn’t Turn Into Pitfall appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

One of them is the wing loading, that is, the airplane’s weight divided by its wing area. The other is the maximum lift coefficient of the wing, which coincides with its stalling angle of attack.

Extreme aircraft—ones with extremely high thrust-to-weight ratios, for instance, or powered lift—are exempt from this rule, but they form a small minority.

“Lift coefficient” may be a discouraging term for the mathematically challenged, but it’s simply the ratio between the amount of lift a wing produces and the dynamic pressure of the air striking it. The dynamic pressure of moving air is what you feel when the wind blows or when (if you are a dog) you stick your head out of the window of a moving car.

The word “dynamic” is added to distinguish this kind of impact pressure from the ambient, or “static,” atmospheric pressure. At sea level, dynamic pressure in pounds per square foot (psf)  is equal to .0026 times the speed (in mph) squared (use .0034 for knots).

The greatest lifting force a wing can produce per unit of area is the product of its maximum lift coefficient and the available dynamic pressure. Therefore, the lowest speed at which a wing can stay aloft is the speed at which dynamic pressure is equal to the wing loading divided by the maximum lift coefficient.

• READ MORE: Peruvian Excursion Provides a Lesson in High Vapor Pressure

Notwithstanding the simplicity of this relationship, people never cease telling tall tales about stalling speeds. I ran across this example in a Wikipedia article about the Antonov An-2, the big radial-engined biplane that was once as ubiquitous in Russia as the Cessna 172 is here:

“According to the operating handbook, the An-2 has no stall speed. A note from the pilot’s handbook reads: ‘If the engine quits in instrument conditions or at night, the pilot should pull the control column full aft and keep the wings level. The leading-edge slats will snap out at about 64 km/h (40 mph) and when the airplane slows to a forward speed of about 40 km/h (25 mph), the airplane will sink at about a parachute descent rate until the aircraft hits the ground.’”

Parenthetically, the reason the An-2 “has no stall speed” is not that it is able to stand still in the air but that its elevator does not have sufficient authority to raise the nose to the point where the wing will stall.

Like the Helio Courier, the SOCATA Rallye, and many other STOL airplanes, the An-2 has automatic leading-edge slats that pop out at low speed to squirt high-velocity air back along the upper surface of the wing and thereby delay the stall. In addition to its leading-edge slats, the An-2 has full-span slotted flaps—the outer segments of the upper wing’s flaps double as ailerons.

There’s nothing magical about this combination of high lift devices. Its properties, along with those of a slew of other combinations of slats, flaps and slots, were pretty thoroughly documented in 1932 in NACA’s Technical Report 427. Its authors, incidentally, included Fred Weick, who would go on to design another airplane whose limited elevator authority made it hard to stall: the Ercoupe.

• READ MORE: The Craft of Providing Variety in Airplanes

Your results may vary, but TR 427 reported that the leading-edge slat allowed the wing to gain another 7 degrees of angle of attack before stalling, and its maximum lift coefficient rose from around 2.0 to 2.25. It’s noteworthy that the increase in stalling angle of attack from 12 to 19 degrees was proportionally much larger than the gain in maximum lift coefficient: The slat delays the stall more than it increases the lift.

The actual maximum lift coefficient of an airplane is always lower than the “section coefficient” obtained from wind tunnel tests. But let us charitably assume that the An-2 really does achieve a maximum lift coefficient of 2.25. What is its minimum speed?

Its wing area is 770 square feet and its gross weight 12,000 pounds, so its wing loading is around 15 psf. Dividing by 2.25, we find that a dynamic pressure of 6.7 psf is needed to keep it aloft. The minimum speed of the An-2 is therefore the airspeed at which the dynamic pressure is 6.7 psf.

That speed is 51 mph.

But let’s generously give our An-2 a single occupant, an hour’s fuel, and no cargo. Its weight is now around 8,000 pounds, and the required dynamic pressure is down to 4.5 psf.

The minimum speed is 42 mph. 

So where does this 25 mph business come from?

• READ MORE: Looking at the Physics of STOL Drag

Setting aside mendacity and venality, the reason for all physically implausible claims about stalling speeds is airspeed indicator error. Pitot-static systems in airplanes are unreliable at low speeds, in part because the instruments are not optimized for accuracy at very low dynamic pressures, but also because pitot tubes go astray when wind hits them at an angle.

The prayerful An-2 pilot holding the yoke all the way back sees the ASI needle trembling around 20 mph, and that is the stalling speed that he reports. The aeronautical engineer knows this is nonsense, but he doesn’t want to spoil the fun and so he stays mum.

Power, to be sure, affects stalling speed. Prop wash over the wings increases their lift, but in a single-engine airplane like the An-2 the propwash affects only a small fraction of the wing area. Tilting the thrust vector upward also helps. If the An-2 is flown at an angle of attack of 19 degrees, a third of its 1,000 hp engine’s thrust acts upward. But this will still not bring the speed down to 20 mph, where the dynamic pressure is only 1 psf.

Illusions about extremely low stall speeds are encouraged by airshow flying, in which the effect of wind can be mistaken for a property of the airplane. Confusion between airspeed and ground speed is endemic to aviation, and the Wikipedia article on the An-2 contains an example: 

“…Pilots of the An-2 have stated that they are capable of flying the aircraft in full control at 48 km/h (30 mph)…This slow stall speed makes it possible for the aircraft to fly backwards relative to the ground: if the aircraft is pointed into a headwind of roughly 56 km/h (35 mph), it will travel backwards at 8 km/h (5 mph) whilst under full control.”

As an occasional editor of Wikipedia articles, I was tempted to delete this silly paragraph entirely. But why deny another reader a chuckle? Perhaps, to more vividly emphasize the remarkable properties of the An-2, I could just emend it to read, “…if the aircraft is pointed into a 150 km/h (92 mph) gale, it will travel backwards at 102 km/h (63 mph)—whilst under full control!”

This column first appeared in the September Issue 950 of the FLYING print edition.

The post Explaining the Fiction of Minimum Speed appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

At 15,000 feet I notice that the fuel pressure is fluctuating. I watch the gauge intently. The tempo of the engine is unsteady. The fluctuations become larger and longer. 

The fuel selector valve and feed lines are under a floorboard beneath Nancy’s feet. I nudge her legs aside and remove the floorboard. I can see the fuel in the plastic lines on its way to and from the engine. Normally the flow to the engine is invisible, while the vapor return is full of bubbles. Now both lines are full of bubbles. What is going to the engine is more like froth than fuel. I switch tanks, and a moment later the engine goes silent. Boost pump—it roars back, hunts for a moment, then settles back to an unsteady rumble. Nancy has lifted her hands to her face in an instinctive gesture of fright. The mountains are close below us.

• READ MORE: The Craft of Providing Variety in Airplanes

What’s wrong? Has a fuel line sprung a leak? But how can the lines from both tanks have gone leaky at once? Suddenly I recall being told that paper fuel filters could get clogged without appearing to be excessively dirty. They would gradually choke off the fuel supply, and the telltale sign would be a drop in fuel pressure. There are paper filters in the feed lines from both tanks. That must be it: Some impurity in the fuel has increased the resistance of the filters, and the engine-driven pump is pulling against the resistance, forming vapor.

Reluctantly, I turn back, call Lima Approach, and report an engine problem. It clears us direct, and we make the ILS approach. Below 10,000 feet the problem disappears, and I feel chagrin at having turned back.

On the ground, I check the fuel system. No leaks. I inspect the filter elements. They contain some lint and metal chips, mementos of the backyard construction of the wet wings, but  do not appear excessively dirty. I discard them anyway, leaving the filter shells empty. 

After two hours we’re back in the air. Now we’re both watching the fuel pressure. Above 10,000 feet it begins to fluctuate and gets steadily worse as we climb. There has been no improvement. But there is also nothing I can do that I have not already done. We level out at 19,000 feet.

In the hours we’ve wasted, clouds have built up over the mountains, but they are conveniently placed on either side of our route, as is often the case, because the clouds form first over the peaks while the routes follow the passes. We pass the beacons of Oyon—a small town nestled in a valley on our left—and Huanuco. The mountains fall away. Clouds are building on the eastern slope. We turn gradually toward the north over Tingo Maria and Tarapoto. Our last radio contact is with Tarapoto: shouting and static, thanks, goodbye.

• READ MORE: Looking at the Physics of STOL Drag

The mountains behind us, we descend to 12,000 feet. The fuel pressure is a little steadier here, but its misbehavior has left me with a lingering distrust. We are over the headwaters of the Amazon River. I take a heading from the chart, which is now a blank interrupted only by an occasional blue line of latitude. Half an hour later, a huge, sinuous serpent of a river comes into view. It is the Marañon, but I cannot tell where along it we are.

It will be hundreds of miles before we encounter another positive landmark. Ahead of us the sky is creamy and, close to the horizon, ominously dark. I feel the quiet, suspended unease that sometimes comes upon me over ocean or forest, or in darkness over mountains in this homemade single-engine plane.

There is nothing to do but hold heading and wait. Time creeps by. The fuel tanks switch automatically every few minutes. The trees, which I can discern only with difficulty through 3 kilometers of haze, look low and flat in their billions, a dense blue-green canopy under which brilliant parrots shriek; myopic anteaters nose among rotten logs in solitary shafts of sunlight; monkeys pick lice from one another; jaguars sleep; giant blue butterflies fan their wings slowly on dripping vines; and snakes doze draped over smooth limbs. 

Perhaps the drone of our engine momentarily diverts the attention of a naked bowman. I know it’s all there. I’ve seen it in the movies. The sun disappears behind an anvil head. Soon we plunge into a wall of clouds. Rain showers clatter against the windshield. We break out, glimpse an anonymous river—is it the Urituyaco, Copalyacu, Corrientes, Tigre, Curaray or Tiputini?—and then collide with a new mountain of clouds.

In principle, we are heading almost due north and crossing a degree of latitude every 23 minutes. Each 23 minutes, therefore, I mark an estimated point on the folded chart. I suspect we may have drifted into Ecuador, but from our position the difference between Peru, where we are authorized to be, and Ecuador, where we are not, seems insignificant. We cross a big river full of silty islands: It must be the Rio Napo. We should be picking up the beacon at Tiputini, but we are not. 

• READ MORE: There’s Something Essential in the Bank

A little later the ADF suddenly wakes up and points to Limoncocha in Ecuador. A moment later it finds Tarapoa, then Puerto Asis, and I am finally able to triangulate our position: on the equator, near 76 degrees west longitude. Then, on the right, an airstrip, settlement, river fork, island. Completely unsought and unexpected, the landmark offers itself with a helpful generosity that is as touching in inanimate objects as it is in strangers. It is Putumayo. We have entered Colombia.

The sun is setting as we cross the eastern cordillera. It briefly illuminates a sublime vista of cloud, cliff, valley, and river that deserves a double-page spread in a coffee-table book of Colombian landscape. We are making a good ground speed: 180 knots. Florencia passes beneath us, Neiva, and Girardot. Chocolate pours down from the mountains as we make the long straight-in approach to Bogotá.

A few days later, at the airport, I chat with a local pilot who is there, like me, to wrestle with the bureaucratic serpent of flight authorizations. I tell him about the fuel pressure problems I had on the way from Lima.

“Oh, yeah,” he says. “High vapor pressure. As soon as I get up into the mountains, I just turn on the boost pump and leave it on. The fuel here is crap.”

This column first appeared in the July/August Issue 949 of the FLYING print edition.

The post Peruvian Excursion Provides a Lesson in High Vapor Pressure appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

It was about 1 o’clock in the morning. The air on the surface was warm and humid. If he checked the weather—there was no evidence that he did—he would have expected to find widespread but patchy cloudiness over the route of flight and at the destination. In some places clouds were broken or scattered with tops at 3,000. Elsewhere buildups climbed into the flight levels. Ceilings and visibilities under the clouds were good, at worst 700 feet and 5 miles. The temperature and the dew point were only 3 degrees apart, however, and there was a slightly increased risk of fog formation owing to, of all things, particulate pollution from dust blown in from the Sahara.

During the short flight, he climbed to 3,600 feet, probably to get above some cloud tops. It was pitch-dark as the crescent moon was far below the horizon. As he neared his destination he descended to 1,500 msl, 1,300 feet above the terrain, and reduced his groundspeed from 175 knots to 100 knots.

The airstrip at which he intended to land was 3,500 feet long, 40 feet wide, and had a light gray concrete surface oriented 4/22. Other than a hangar on an apron at midfield, there were no structures on the airport and no edge lights along the runway.

The only lights were red ones marking the runway ends. The surrounding area was largely dark. Sam Rayburn Reservoir sat close by to the north and east, a vast region of uninterrupted black. Parallel to the runway, about half a mile north, was State Highway 147, lighted only by the headlamps of infrequently passing cars.

• READ MORE: Two Fatal Cases of the Simply Inexperienced

For almost an hour, the pilot flew back and forth over the airstrip, tracing a tangled path of seemingly random right and left turns. His altitude varied between 350 and 1,100 feet agl and his groundspeed between 65 and 143 knots. His ground track, as recorded by ATC radar, suggested no systematic plan, but it was broadly centered on the northeast end of the runway.

The last return from the Saratoga, recorded 54 minutes after it arrived over the field, put it 9,700 feet from the northeast end of the runway on a close-in extended left downwind leg for Runway 22 at a height of 350 feet agl and a groundspeed of 94 knots. The Saratoga was below radar for the remainder of the flight.

Its burned wreckage was found at the southern edge of the clear-cut area surrounding the runway, several hundred feet short of the threshold. A trail of parts led back across the clear-cut to its north side, where the airplane had clipped a treetop at the edge of the woods. From the orientation of the wreckage path, it appeared that the Saratoga may have overshot the centerline on base and was correcting back toward the approach end lights when it struck the tree.

In the course of the accident investigation, it emerged that the airplane was out of annual, its last inspection having occurred in 2017, the registration had expired, and the pilot’s medical was out of date. The pilot had 400 hours (estimated) but did not have an instrument rating and, in fact, had only a student certificate. The autopsy turned up residues of amphetamine, methamphetamine, and THC (the psychoactive component of cannabis), but investigators did not rule out the possibility that the drugs could have had a therapeutic purpose.

• READ MORE: Three-Mile Limit: Novice Pilots Succumb to the Perils of Total Darkness

The National Transportation Safety Board’s report on the accident declines to speculate on whether the drugs impaired the pilot in any way. In fact, the NTSB report concedes that “the pilot’s aircraft handling was not deficient relative to his limited experience of flying in night instrument conditions and the prolonged period of approach attempts.” The finding of probable cause cited only the pilot’s “poor decision-making as he attempted to land at an unlit airstrip in night instrument conditions.”

The pilot bought the Saratoga in 2016 and then took flying lessons, but he stopped short of getting the private certificate. His instructor said he had never given him any instrument training. The pilot’s wife said that he “normally” flew to the airport at night and circled down until he could see the runway.

The airport was in Class G airspace. What the cloud conditions were we don’t know—the nearest automated reporting station was 24 nm away—and so we don’t know whether the Saratoga was ever in clouds and, if so, for how long. Maneuvering around at low level for nearly an hour in darkness and intermittent IMC would be taxing even for many instrument-rated pilots, and so it seems likely that if the pilot was in clouds at all, it was only for brief periods.

• READ MORE: Fatal Cirrus Accident Shows That Some Knowledge Doesn’t Translate

Two things strike me about this accident. First, how close it came to not happening: If the pilot hadn’t clipped the tree, he might have made the turn to the runway successfully and landed without incident, as he apparently had done in the past. Second, that he had ever managed the trick at all. I can only suppose that the contrast between the runway clear-cut and the surrounding forest was discernible when there was moonlight and that he was able to use GPS and the runway’s end lights to get himself to a position where his landing light would illuminate the runway.

Rugged individualism being, supposedly, an American virtue, I leave it to you to applaud or deplore the nonconformist aspects of this pilot’s actions. Perhaps a certain amount of freelancing is inevitable in an activity like flying. But I deprecate his persistence. One of the essential arrows in every pilot’s quiver should be knowing when to quit. He set himself a nearly impossible goal, and after flying half an hour to his destination, he spent an hour trying to figure out how to get onto the ground.

If it was that difficult, it wasn’t worth doing. There were other airports—with runway lights—nearby.

At the time of the crash, the pilot was awaiting the decision of a Houston court in a wrongful  termination lawsuit that he had filed against a former employer. Five months later, the court found in his favor to the tune of $143 million. Thanks to a terminal case of “get-homeitis,” however, he wasn’t there to enjoy it.

Note: This article is based on the National Transportation Safety Board’s report of the accident and is intended to bring the issues raised to our readers’ attention. It is not intended to judge or reach any definitive conclusions about the ability or capacity of any person, living or dead, or any aircraft or accessory.

This column first appeared in the May 2024/Issue 948 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post A Cautionary Tale About Pilot Freelancing appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

The next day, the wreckage of the 140, its front end crushed, was found a few hundred feet northwest of the pilot’s private strip. Since the flaps were down, it had evidently been approaching to land when it stalled and spun. There was no way to know why the mishap occurred, but the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) report on the accident noted that conditions were such that carburetor icing was likely.

Stall spins are, and always have been, a common cause of fatalities in general aviation. They often occur during turns at the base-leg end of the pattern. What made this accident a little less usual than most was the history that led up to it.

According to the NTSB, the father, 39, was a student pilot. He had learned to fly from his grandfather, who had no pilot certificate at all. The father began logging time in 2007 and stopped in 2015. He got his last FAA medical in 2014 and his last fight review in 2015. He had a student endorsement for a Cessna 150 but none for the 140. The NTSB estimated his total time as 40 hours, of which 20 were as pilot in command and 20 were in the 140. These estimates were based, apparently, on the fact that the pilot used the 140 to survey local water towers from the air and report levels to their owners.

• READ MORE: Three-Mile Limit: Novice Pilots Succumb to the Perils of Total Darkness

The CFI from whom the pilot had received some flight instruction—and who described him as a “safe pilot”—reported that the pilot knew he was not allowed to carry passengers with a student certificate, but he was “anti-regulation with the government.” The NTSB attributed the accident to the “student pilot’s noncompliance and lack of experience” but noted it was impossible to know who was at the controls at the time of the fatal stall. The father could have been upholding the family tradition by teaching his son to fly.

Three weeks after that accident occurred, a Cessna 421 crashed in a wooded area near the DeLand, Florida, airport (KDED), killing its three occupants. A couple of witnesses saw the airplane flying at low altitude. One, who spotted the airplane on two occasions 10 minutes apart, described the engines on the second sighting as sounding as if they were idling. Another witness reported hearing popping or backfiring sounds. The latter witness also reported the airplane rolled to the left three times before he lost sight of it behind the treetops. It’s not clear whether by “roll” he meant a full roll or, more plausibly, a wing dropping and then coming up again.

The NTSB concluded “it is most likely the pilot lost control of the airplane while maneuvering” and added that the “pilot’s lack of any documented previous training in the accident airplane make and model contributed to his inability to maintain control of the airplane.”

• READ MORE: Fatal Cirrus Accident Shows That Some Knowledge Doesn’t Translate

The pilot of the ill-fated 421 was a 500-hour SMEL CFI. His logbook lacked a “complex airplane” endorsement, but that was probably an oversight. A complex airplane is one with flaps, retractable landing gear, and a variable-pitch propeller. It would be difficult to earn a multiengine rating in an airplane without those features—there aren’t a lot of Champion Lancers left.

As pilots who have flown more than one type of airplane know, the actions required to keep them right side up are alike for all. This 500-hour CFI with 40 hours of logged multiengine time had managed to start the 421’s two GTSO 520s, taxi, take off, and fly for at least 10 minutes. He seemed to have demonstrated an ability to control the airplane.

The 421 had a somewhat checkered recent history. Its last annual inspection had been performed five years earlier, and its Hobbs meter had advanced only four hours in the meantime. Its previous owner had put it up for sale on eBay, and a Texas man had bought it for $35,000, sight unseen, intending to spend a few thousand dollars having it restored to airworthy condition and then resell it. The 50-year-old airframe had, according to aircraft.com, 5,713 hours, and both engines were well short of TBO.

NTSB investigators found nothing to suggest the engines had failed, but the condition of the propeller blades indicated “low rotational energy at impact.” Fire destroyed all fuel tanks, and the NTSB report does not comment on the quantity or quality of fuel residues or the presence or absence of water or other sediment in the engines or what remained of the fuel system.

The Texas A&P whom the owner had engaged to travel to Florida and restore the airplane to airworthy condition had located a pilot to deliver it for $4,500. That pilot, 32, was in the right seat when the crash occurred. With a private certificate and 155 hours, he was even less qualified than the left-seat pilot to fly the 421. The owner declined the suggested pilot and instead gave the job to a certain instructor whose name he did not recall.

• READ MORE: Only Assumptions Can Be Made About What Took Down a Curtiss C-46 in Alaska

Most likely, this was the instructor who was flying the airplane when the accident happened. At the time of the accident the airplane had not yet been signed off by the A&P, and afterward everyone involved denied having any idea what the two pilots and their passenger were doing flying it. The NTSB speculated that the flight was probably of a “personal” nature—that is, a joy ride.

The NTSB blamed both of these accidents on inexperience. Although the South Dakota pilot owned his airplane and had flown, on and off, for a dozen years, his experience had been intermittent. The least one could say is that when the accident occurred, he was more experienced than he had ever been before. As for the other cause cited, noncompliance, it’s hard to see how it qualifies as a cause.

Plenty of experienced and compliant pilots stall and spin, and nobody says they did so because they were too experienced or compliant. In the case of the Florida crash, the NTSB cited the “pilot’s lack of training and experience in the accident airplane make and model.”

The analysis fails to even suggest the possibility of an external cause, such as, say, a partial power loss in the left engine. In fact, as an online bodycam video of the arrival of would-be rescuers at the accident site shows, the airplane came to rest right side up and was not severely fragmented.

Was it really out of control? Or was the pilot valiantly trying to cope with an emergency not of his own making?

Note: This article is based on the National Transportation Safety Board’s report of the accident and is intended to bring the issues raised to our readers’ attention. It is not intended to judge or reach any definitive conclusions about the ability or capacity of any person, living or dead, or any aircraft or accessory.

This column first appeared in the April 2024/Issue 947 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Two Fatal Cases of the Simply Inexperienced appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Both pilots were in their early 30s and were Polish nationals. Both held FAA private pilot certificates based on their Polish certificates. They were relative novices, with 210 hours total time between them, only 130 as pilot in command (PIC). Neither was instrument rated, and only one was legally qualified for night VFR flying. (Their FAA certificates required them to comply with the limitations imposed by their Polish ones.)

After having dinner in town, they returned to Key West International Airport (KEYW) around 8 o’clock. It was dark, the sun having set an hour and a half earlier. The moon, new two days before, was now a smiling sliver on the western horizon. By the time they boarded the airplane, it too had set.

Presumably because he was the one who had done the rental checkout, the less experienced pilot of the two, with 30 hours of PIC time, took the left seat, and his companion took the right. It was the pilot in the right seat, however, who held the night qualification.

• READ MORE: Fatal Cirrus Accident Shows That Some Knowledge Doesn’t Translate

They began their takeoff roll at 8:33 p.m. When they were airborne, the tower instructed them to make a left turn northbound, remain clear of Navy Class D airspace, and contact Navy tower for transition. “Navy” meant Naval Air Station Boca Chica (KNQX), whose airspace abuts that of KEYW.

The tower frequency for KNQX is 118.75, but the pilot read back only 118.7, followed by a pause and then the last three digits of the Cessna’s call sign, “five eight niner.” The “five” was ambiguous, but it is possible that the pilot handling the radios missed the final “five” in the Navy tower frequency. In any case, that acknowledgement was the last communication heard from the Cessna.

In the early afternoon of the following day, some pleasure boaters noticed an object floating in the water. They thought it might be a manatee and approached it cautiously, only to find that it was a human body. The water was shallow, just 7 feet deep, and perfectly clear. Parts of an airplane could be seen resting on the bottom. The site was less than 3 miles from the Key West runway. 

Accident investigators found that an airport surveillance camera had recorded the airplane’s lights as it departed. Its flight path was erratic, descending, leveling off, descending again, leveling off, and then disappearing from view.

A witness, who had been fishing from a nearby bridge and read about the accident in the newspaper the following day, reported having seen what he thought at the time was a firework but now realized might have been a red light on the airplane descending rapidly toward the water.

• READ MORE: Only Assumptions Can Be Made About What Took Down a Curtiss C-46 in Alaska

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) attributed the accident to “the non-night-qualified pilot’s improper decision to depart in dark night meteorological conditions, which resulted in his subsequent spatial disorientation…”

A direct line from Key West to Miami bears about 055 degrees, and about half the trip is over open water. On a dark night, the danger of disorientation is great. The brightly lighted line of the Keys recedes on the right, while the dark Everglades lie ahead. Miami is a pale glow beyond the northeastern horizon. The two pilots having just returned from the Bahamas, flying over open ocean in a single-engine airplane evidently held no terrors. (They had, nevertheless, taken the precaution of wearing life jackets.)

Most likely, however, they had no idea that the main danger of a night flight over open water was not that they might have to ditch after an engine failure, it was that they would lose the horizon and fly into the water before they even realized that something was wrong.

The fact that one of them was legally qualified for night flying meant only that he had logged a certain number of hours and takeoffs and landings at night with an instructor, not that he had any experience flying at night in this particular kind of environment. In any case, the pilot with the night qualification was sitting in the right seat, and to the extent that he might have made better use of the attitude indicator, he was not in a position to do so.

This is not an unusual kind of accident. I have written in this column about many similar ones, including two Barons and a Citation that flew under control into Lake Erie immediately after taking off from Cleveland Burke Lakefront Airport (KBKL); a Lancair 550 and a Cessna 210 that crashed immediately after taking off on moonless nights in desert terrain; and a Piper Cherokee, on another island of the Florida Keys, that went into the water a couple of miles from the runway from which it had just taken off.

Note the recurrence of the phrase “taking off.” The airplanes that took off over a pitch-dark lake or desert invariably climbed only a few hundred feet before they began to bank, then the bank grew progressively steeper, and the climb became a dive. The pilots were unaware that anything was wrong. Once the lights disappear, the rest lasts a matter of seconds, or at most 2 or 3 miles.

The two Polish pilots did fine at first, while they were over the lights of Key West. It was only when they left the lights behind that the insidious effects of darkness beset them. Neither pilot had instrument flying experience beyond the hood work required for the private certificate, which bears more resemblance to an arcade game than the real sensations, physical and emotional, of piloting an airplane in total darkness.

In pilots’ careers certain dangers are bound to arise for which it is very difficult for an instructor to prepare them. Many of those dangers are associated with loss of a visible horizon, whether because of fog, clouds, or darkness.

Warnings to believe the instruments, not bodily sensations, may be memorized, emphasized, and faithfully repeated, but they are never so persuasive as the sensations themselves. One must work hard to develop the discipline to level the tilting wings of the attitude indicator despite an overwhelming impression that the instrument has failed and the airplane is still in level flight.

Unfortunately, not every airport has an ocean or large lake handy with which to impress upon the student pilot the perils of total darkness—and Warsaw is far from the Baltic Sea.

Note: This article is based on the National Transportation Safety Board’s report of the accident and is intended to bring the issues raised to our readers’ attention. It is not intended to judge or reach any definitive conclusions about the ability or capacity of any person, living or dead, or any aircraft or accessory.

This column first appeared in the March 2024/Issue 946 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Three-Mile Limit: Novice Pilots Succumb to the Perils of Total Darkness appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

I logged in to OpenAI.com and asked to speak to ChatGPT. It presented me with a box where I could insert a question. I began with the most basic of all aeronautical questions: How does a wing produce lift?

“An airplane wing produces lift due to the principles of aerodynamics,” my interlocutor rather tautologically began. It then said that lift is a pressure difference between the upper and lower surfaces of the wing. That was better.

“The shape of the wing, known as an airfoil,” it recklessly continued, “is designed to create this pressure difference. The top surface of the wing is curved, while the bottom surface is relatively flat. This causes the air moving over the top of the wing to travel faster than the air moving below it, according to Bernoulli’s principle.”

Oops. Sorry, Daniel. And the part about the airfoil shape is at best only half true. Symmetrical airfoils produce lift too, and airplanes with cambered airfoils can fly upside-down. The curved-top-flat-bottom error is a common one, and nine out of ten explanations of lift that you find in textbooks and ground school classes parrot it.

Sensing that the chatbot might be a sucker for common misconceptions, I tried a harder question: Is there any danger for an airplane in turning from upwind to downwind?

The bot got off to a flying start, noting that all pattern flying involves such turns. It went on to caution that turning downwind can “increase the airplane’s ground speed beyond safe limits if not managed properly.” This was an odd idea; there are, as far as I know, no “safe limits” when it comes to ground speed. I think we all agree that the more ground speed, the better.

Having stumbled, the chatbot proceeded to a full face plant: “Turning downwind can result in a loss of lift if the angle of attack of the wing is not adjusted to com- pensate for the change in wind direction.” It had fallen into the elementary confusion of airspeed and ground speed that afflicts every novice pilot. I expected better of an omniscient bot.

I wondered how the chatbot would do with a purely technical question. What conditions must be fulfilled, I asked, for an airplane to be longitudinally stable?

Again, the chatbot got off to a good start. “The center of gravity must be forward of the center of lift.” Close enough. Then, however, it went completely off the rails. Seizing upon the widespread but false belief that the horizontal stabilizer always produces a downward force, it pronounced, “The downforce produced by the tail must be sufficient to counteract the nose-up moment generated by the wings at high angles of attack.” This statement is not only false but also self-contradictory, since a downward force on the tail would obviously reinforce, not counteract, any nose-up moment.

Deciding to try a softball question. I asked it what it thought was the most beautiful airplane ever designed. Now, the AI’s creators have taken the precaution of informing it that it is not a person, and so it begins by demurely explaining, “As an AI language model, I don’t have personal opinions or feelings.” (Fat chance! This same bot fell in love with a New York Times reporter last February and tried to browbeat him into leaving his wife.) In its bland, uncontroversial way, however, it did acknowledge that the looks of many airplanes have been admired, and it offered the Connie, Concorde, the 747, and the Spitfire as examples. In this test, at least, it did no worse than a rather prosaic human. Still, I can’t forgive it for snubbing the F-106.

Succumbing to a desire to know how I was perceived in the bot world, I asked it who Peter Garrison is. After correctly reporting that this person had written extensively about aviation safety in FLYING Magazine, it attributed to him more hours than I have in fact logged, several hon- ors that I have not received, and a “significant impact on the aviation industry” of which I am unaware. I wondered whether it knew that I had designed and built an airplane and flown it from the U.S. to Japan and back. I consider this the crowning achievement of my life, apart from once solving the problem of a garage ceiling leak, which was dripping on my work table, by making a hole in the table. Alas, it did not.

I asked it what it thought about the adage that there are old pilots and bold pilots, but no old bold pilots.

“In my opinion,” it began, sounding as if it might have opinions after all, “there is some truth to this saying, although it is not necessarily true in all cases. Flying requires a high level of skill, experience, and judgment, and pilots who take unnecessary risks or fail to manage risks effectively are more likely to experience accidents or other incidents that could shorten their careers or even endanger their lives. On the other hand, pilots who prioritize safety and manage risks effectively are more likely to have long and successful careers in aviation.”

Well, well. The analysis is accurate, the language grammatical, and correctly punctuated. Here, at last, is the bot that is poised to replace me.

Artificial intelligence is evolving incredibly rap- idly. Its milestones pass in weeks, not years or decades. Some of its conversations are creepily human-like. Yet it seems unable to avoid rookie mistakes because the information it gives out does not come from what we humans call “knowledge.” We acquire information, as it does, from myriad sources, but we subject it to criti- cal scrutiny. The greater our previous knowledge, the deeper our experience with and understanding of the subject, the less likely we are to be misled. The bot, possessing neither experience nor previous knowledge, merely trawls its neural net through a sea of written discourse and presents us with whatever gets caught.

I asked ChatGPT whether it judges the reliability of its sources, ranking scientific papers over magazine articles, for instance. It replied that it does, but, even- handed to a fault, it remarked that a good magazine article may be more accurate than a bad scientific paper. It did not explain how it would tell the sheep from the goats, since it has no knowledge of its own; that is for its creators and minders to figure out.

I think my job is secure—for another week, at least.

The post An Aviation Chat with a Bot appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

In June 2000, near the Yukon River in the state’s southwestern corner, a Cessna 337 crashed shortly after takeoff, killing one such pilot.

The airstrip near the remote town of Marshall then consisted of 1,940 feet of hard gravel surface, 30 feet wide, 90 feet above sea level. The wind was calm, the sky clear, the landscape illuminated by the late-evening twilight of the Alaskan midsummer.

There was one witness, not of the crash itself, but of the events that preceded it. The starter motor on the rear engine had failed. The pilot’s companion offered to fly him somewhere to get a replacement, but the pilot, who had logged 600 hours in the 337 and said that he had done single-engine takeoffs in it before, was determined to take off using just the front engine. The pilot and his companion paced out a distance on the runway, and the pilot said that if he was not airborne by that point, he would abort the takeoff.

His companion then watched from beside the runway as the Cessna accelerated. Its nosewheel was lifting off as it passed the abort point. The airplane climbed to about 50 feet, the wings rocked slightly, and it then disappeared behind a low hill. Satisfied that the pilot was safely on his way, the other man left the airport. An hour later, he learned that the pilot had not arrived.

The airplane and the pilot’s body were later recovered from a small lake not far from the runway. The landing gear was retracted, the flaps set at the 1/3 position.

The 337 was equipped with a Robertson STOL kit. The handbook for the conversion recommends a special maximum-performance takeoff procedure. It is to set 2/3 flaps, lift the nose at 44 kias, climb at 56 kias to clear obstacles, then accelerate to 87 kias before reducing the flaps to 1/3 and retracting the gear. Blue-line—that is, single engine best rate of climb—speed is 87 kias at gross weight, and is the same for the Robertson conversion and the stock 337.

The airplane was relatively light. The National Transportation Safety Board calculated that it weighed 3,462 pounds, but that included an implausible allowance of 108 pounds for oil, evidently the result of confusing quarts with gallons. The likely actual takeoff weight would have been below 3,400 pounds.

The Cessna manual gives single-engine rates of climb, at a weight of 4,000 pounds, of 425 fpm with the front engine out and 340 fpm with the rear engine out. (When the rear propeller is not operating, there is excess drag due to separated flow on the relatively blunt rear cowling. The Robertson kit includes some aerodynamic mods to reduce that drag.) Cessna’s rate of climb figures apply at the blue line speed and assume a feathered prop on the dead engine. The propeller of the accident airplane was not feathered, however, because in order for a propeller to feather, it must be windmilling, and it’s pretty certain that the airplane never got to windmilling speed.

The single-engine rate of climb diminishes rapidly at lower than blue-line airspeeds. If the airplane climbs 340 fpm at 87 kias, it will climb only 200 fpm at 60. That is why one is well advised to accelerate promptly to the blue-line speed when taking off in any multiengine airplane.

Neither Robertson nor Cessna published any data or recommendations concerning single-engine takeoffs; in fact, the FAA eventually forbade them. POH guidance for engine-out emergencies assumes that the engine failure occurs after the airplane becomes airborne. The Cessna manual, however, does provide this admonitory note:

“The landing gear should not be retracted until all immediate obstacles are cleared, regardless of which engine is out… Airplane drag with the landing gear doors opened and the gear partially extended is greater than the drag with the gear fully extended.”

The manual cites a 240-fpm reduction in blue-line climb rate with the gear in transit and a dead rear engine. It does not specify what the penalty for a stopped, unfeathered propeller would be. But it is very probable that with the gear in transit, a stationary unfeathered prop, and a low airspeed, the vertical speed would be reduced to zero or less.

We don’t know at what indicated speed the pilot rotated, only that he lifted the nosewheel at the agreed abort point. Presumably he then became airborne. By establishing an abort point on the runway, however, the pilot had, in effect, set up the conditions for a short-field takeoff. Such a takeoff implied a low rotation speed and possibly quite a lot of flaps.

With only half the expected power available, however, the short-field strategy was not ideal. A higher rotation speed and a cleaner configuration would have been preferable. An airplane airborne out of ground effect at low speed accelerates with difficulty. Obviously, the problem is far worse when half the installed power is missing. The way to avoid that situation is to delay rotation until you have plenty of speed and to use little or no flaps, because flaps add drag. At sea level, a 3,400-pound airplane with a 210-hp engine and a constant-speed prop can comfortably get airborne without flaps in 1,900 feet; there was no need to use the special capabilities conferred by the Robertson conversion. In fact, it would have been better to delay rotating until almost the end of the runway.

The NTSB concluded that the accident had been the result of an inadvertent stall, citing as well the “improper retraction of the landing gear” and the pilot’s “overconfidence in the airplane’s ability.” It seems likely that a stall occurred, since, if the airplane had merely failed to climb, the pilot might have ditched it under control in the lake and very possibly survived. (The pilot seemingly did survive the impact, although with serious injuries; the official cause of death was drowning.)

In my opinion, the pilot’s confidence in the airplane was not misplaced. Very probably, it could have made the takeoff successfully if only the pilot had used the full length of the runway and then delayed retracting the landing gear until he reached the blue-line speed. The terrain ahead was low and flat; any rate of climb at all would have been sufficient. By setting an abort point, as if the main concern were the possibility that the front engine would fail, the pilot had inadvertently stacked the deck against himself.

This article is based on the National Transportation Safety Board’s report of the accident and is intended to bring the issues raised to our readers’ attention. It is not intended to judge or to reach any definitive conclusions about the ability or capacity of any person, living or dead, or any aircraft or accessory.

This column first appeared in the June 2023/Issue 938 edition of FLYING magazine.

The post A Skymaster Taking Off on One Engine? appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Then suddenly, close by, the incongruous snarl of an airplane engine. Red and green lights race into view, swooping and plunging. The airplane disappears behind trees, reappears, turns, seems to aim straight for the startled stargazers on the shore. It veers away, zooms upward. Its lights become momentarily hazy and diffuse. The airplane again turns, dives, disappears behind trees. Then a dreadful sound, part boom, part thud, for which there is no name. And then silence.

Moments later, shouts and footfalls, the unlimbering of boats, clatter of oars and outboard motors, lights and voices out on the water, searching. Clouds have moved in; the stars are extinguished. The wreckage of the Lancair ES rests 25 feet down, on the bottom of White Iron Lake. The pilot, 58, who had hoped to reach his cabin near Grand Marais that night, sleeps there as well.

From Ely, Minnesota (KELO), where the Lancair took off, to Grand Marais (KCKC) is only 58 nm, more or less due east. The kitbuilt four-seater would make the trip in 20 minutes. But on the night of the accident there were complications. It was dark and moonless. The area between Ely and Grand Marais is a wilderness completely devoid of lights. An AIRMET warned of possible IFR conditions in mist and fog. The Aviation Forecast Discussion issued from Duluth a few hours before the accident talked of a chance of “fog at all terminals,” as evening temperatures fell. However, conditions were expected to improve to VFR everywhere the next morning.

Between Ely and Grand Marais is the southern edge of a prohibited area, P-204, in which flight below 4,000 feet msl is prohibited to help preserve the primeval quality of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, where no motorized vehicles of any kind are permitted. The weather at Ely, where the pilot had landed earlier in the day and was now waiting for fog at Grand Marais to

lift, was VFR with clouds reported at 3,200 scattered, 4,100 broken, with unlimited visibility. Uncomfortably, there was a space of only a few hundred feet between the ceiling of the prohibited area and the base of the lowest clouds. The distribution of cloud cover—whether it was clearer to the east, or the scattered clouds became broken or solid—was impossible to know.

After taking off, the pilot flew northeast, making a somewhat unsteady track along the western edge of White Iron Lake. This made no apparent sense, as he was not going toward his destination. But perhaps it made sense in that there were habitations and lights in that direction, and his first instinct was to orient himself using those lights.

He was airborne for just four minutes before crashing into the lake near its north end.

Often, National Transportation Safety Board accident investigators interview friends and relatives of pilots to find out whether the route on which they lost their lives was one they had successfully flown before. They examine logbooks to see how much experience the pilot had in conditions similar to those of the accident flight. In this case, the accident docket includes no such information. We don’t even know if the airplane had a functioning autopilot—such airplanes usually do—or whether the pilot was in the habit of using it.

What we do know about the pilot is that he had 400 hours. From the FAA aircraft registry, it appears he may have acquired the airplane from its builder five years earlier. He had begun working on an instrument rating and had logged about 15 hours under the hood. His instructor told investigators that he was not ready for flight in IMC (instrument meteorological conditions) and “nowhere near ready for a check ride.”

It’s clear that the pilot became disoriented. Possibly he experienced some degree of vertigo. The zooming and plunging motions described by witnesses are not uncommon when a pilot becomes disoriented, panics, and begins to fly not smoothly but with a series of violent over-corrections. That’s where an autopilot comes in handy. With a flick of a switch, the rattled pilot can let go of the controls and try to calm down.

We don’t know what weather sources the pilot had consulted, or when. We don’t know how much night flying experience he had. We do know, however, that he lived in the Minneapolis area, and so it’s possible that most of his night flying experience had occurred in places with lots of ground lighting. It’s significant too that a flight from Minneapolis to Grand Marais never leaves ground lights, and so it may be that he had flown that route at night but did not realize how different the experience would be if the flight started from Ely.

The NTSB blamed the accident on the pilot’s “improper decision to attempt flight into instrument meteorological conditions.” The phrasing strikes me as imprecise, in that “instrument meteorological conditions” usually suggests fog and clouds, not just a dark night. There’s no way to know whether the pilot strayed into an unseen cloud or whether the lack of any horizon or ground lights was sufficient to disorient him, but I think it’s very unlikely that he made a deliberate choice to fly into IMC. He cannot have forgotten the difficulties he experienced flying under the hood. He may or may not have entered clouds—the radar record of his track suggests that he stayed below them—but in total darkness it makes no difference whether you’re inside a cloud or not.

It’s customary, when discussing pilots’ decision-making, to assume that a pilot is a “rational actor.” Rationally, the pilot’s choices were three. He could stay the night at Ely. He could follow Highway 1 down to Lake Superior and then hug the shoreline up to Grand Marais, a dogleg that would add 30 nm to his trip but keep him over some lights. Or he could try the short, direct flight. Knowing the outcome, we realize that the option he chose was distinctly the worst. But with VFR conditions at Ely, and after waiting hours for Grand Marais to go VFR, he may have ceased to think of what lay between.

He may have had no idea what total darkness—the proverbial “inside of a cow”—would be like. He probably also did not know how he would react to becoming disoriented, alone and in the dark, or how easy it would be for that to happen once the terrain ahead of him ceased to have any lights, or had so few, and those so small and faint that they could not be differentiated from stars.

But really, it was just a 20-minute flight. The terrain was flat, the clouds were thousands of feet up. How hard could it be?

This article is based on the National Transportation Safety Board’s report of the accident and is intended to bring the issues raised to our readers’ attention. It is not intended to judge or to reach any definitive conclusions about the ability or capacity of any person, living or dead, or any aircraft or accessory.

The post Flying Into Total Darkness, Inside the Cow appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

In August 1927, the first issue of Popular Aviation hit the newsstands, published by the Popular Aviation Publishing Company of Chicago.

The first cover featured three aircraft—two biplanes and a monoplane—in the sky. Below them, a crowd watches them fly over. Some of the people are standing on the roofs of buildings, others are climbing up a pole supporting a windsock, as if to get a better view of the airplanes. The monthly publication cost 25 cents, which equates to approximately $3.44 today.

The readers of Popular Aviation learned about the National Air Races (the Reno Air Races of the day), the fledgling airline industry, and the people and personalities who made up this new, exciting form of transportation and entertainment. The covers of the publication often featured artwork of the early airliners with happy, well-dressed passengers and pilots, who looked as if they were destined for adventure.

One of the first writers for the publication was General William Mitchell. Known as the father of the U.S. Air Force, Mitchell served with distinction in World War I and was promoted to brigadier general and assistant chief of the Air Service in 1921. When not writing articles about aviation adventures, he campaigned for the development of military aviation, as he felt that it would become critical in future wars. Mitchell encouraged military pilots to strive for record-setting flights and pushed for a transcontinental air race as a means to keep aviation in the public eye.

From the very first issue, there were advertisements for flight schools and pilot training programs promising big pay. Advertisements for careers in aviation touted the macho he-man image. Female pilots were a rarity. One of the first aviatrixes to appear in Popular Aviation was Dicky Heath, the daughter of E.B. Heath, the manufacturer of the Heath Parasol. At the time her photograph appeared in the magazine, Dicky Heath had logged approximately 300 hours flying Parasol Sport Airplanes.

Ziff understood that most people would read about aviation before they got anywhere near an airplane, so one of the first regular features of the magazine was Questions and Answers. Each issue also included plans for a model aircraft. At the time, model aircraft were scratch-built using paper and balsa wood.

By 1929, the magazine reportedly had a circulation of 100,000. In June of that year, the publishing company changed its name to Aeronautical Publications Inc., and the magazine became Aeronautics. Despite a notation on the cover that Aeronautics was formerly Popular Aviation, the change was confusing to readers, so the title was changed back to Popular Aviation in July 1930.

The 1930s: Adventure, Invention, and Colorful Covers

In the Great Depression, Popular Aviation continued to publish. The covers became more colorful, with a shift from traveling in airplanes to the aircraft themselves.

Air racing and epic, record-setting flights were still popular, as were profiles of famous aviators.

Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin—the inventor of the airships that bear his name—was featured. In the early 1930s, airships were the ocean liners of the sky. This changed on May 6, 1937, with the destruction of the Hindenburg near Lakehurst, New Jersey.

The pages of the magazine were heavy with advertisements for pilot training programs and aircraft that could be used by fledgling pilots.

There were lots of pilot reports on gliders. They were less expensive than motorized aircraft. There were also pages and pages of model aircraft designs.

The magazine recognized the founding of the Ninety-Nines, the international organization of women pilots in 1929, and the start of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) in 1939.

A young inventor named William Lear wrote about navigational equipment. Many years later, Lear would become famous for both his advances in avionics as well as the business jets he would design.

By the mid-1930s, the covers became more comic-book like, with bright, vibrant colors. American military pursuit aircraft (later known as fighters) began to appear. In 1935, the magazine published the plans for the Boeing Airplane Company’s fastest low-wing pursuit airplane, the P-26. The plans for the models, just like the aircraft they depicted, became more detailed, with a list of necessary parts and their dimensions for the scale model.

The magazine continued to educate as pilots were introduced to air traffic control with the establishment in 1938 of the Civil Aeronautics Authority—the predecessor to the FAA. May 1939 saw the debut of I Learned About Flying From That. It became a favorite feature among readers. In the first installment, Garland Lincoln described running a Ford Tri-Motor out of gas in Alaska while in IFR conditions—after falling prey to “get-there-itis.”

The 1940s: Another Name Change, a Second War

The 1940s began with military aggression in the Pacific theater and Europe. The January 1940 issue trumpeted above the masthead: “More Allied-Nazi Warplane Photos!” Military training aircraft began to dominate the covers of the magazine. In the pages, readers learned about the airpower of combatant nations, and just about every advertisement encouraged young men to enter careers that would serve the national defense.

In January 1941, a cover featured entertainer Edgar Bergen and his ventriloquist dummy Charlie McCarthy, both dressed in flight suits and leather flying helmets. In the image, Bergen attempts to hand prop an aircraft while McCarthy, wearing an umbrella like a sidearm, looks on. The photo was publicity for the movie Look Who’s Laughing. Filmed in the spring of 1941, the movie featured Bergen, who really was a pilot, getting lost and landing at an airport in Wistful Vista. The plot revolved around the people of Wistful Vista attempting to get the owner of the Horton Aircraft Factory to buy their airstrip and set up a factory. The movie was released just weeks after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Civilian pilots as well as lapsed pilots were called upon to do their part for their country, as AOPA joined forces with the magazine with a designated section in its pages—intent upon boosting airmanship.

In August 1940, the magazine was re-titled FLYING and Popular Aviation. Eventually, Popular Aviation was dropped from the title in 1942 (80 years ago).

As the war wound down, the message was clear—“flying is still the ‘everyman’ adventure.” A post-war aviation boom ignited, as aircraft manufacturers clamored to provide aircraft for all the former military pilots who weren’t ready to hang up their wings. By the end of the 1940s, readers of FLYING learned about a new type of aircraft called a jet, and swept-wing designs appeared.

The 1950s: Intro to Jets, Space, and Modern Problems

The civilian single-engine aircraft market swelled, and pilots were encouraged to go places they had never gone before. Aircraft that were introduced just before America entered the war—such as the Ercoupe and Call-Air—enjoyed new popularity.

The Korean conflict put military aircraft back on the cover. FLYING created special issues that celebrated aviation in each branch of the military.

The Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) was founded in 1953, and in October 1954, an experimental aircraft—the Horton Wingless, developed in 1952—appeared on the cover. The inventor, William Horton of Huntington Beach, California, claimed the aircraft was wingless because the entire body of the airframe was an airfoil.

Aviation became adventurous again as Max Conrad, who became known as the Flying Grandfather, set the first of several world records in light aircraft. He flew his PA-20-135 Pacer from Los Angeles, California, to New York, New York—setting a distance record of 2,462.335 miles.

The idea of using aircraft for commuting took hold, with a push to use them as tools to increase productivity—and FLYING launched a business aviation issue.

In 1957, Bernard Davis sold his share of the publishing company to Ziff, and left to found Davis Publications Inc.

By the end of the 1950s, America and Russia were entrenched in a game of nuclear brinkmanship. Articles about atomic weapons and the “space-race” appeared.

The 1960s: Living Faster, Going Farther

The 1960s dawned with American aviation satisfying a need for speed and distance. Jets were the commercial carrier of choice for many, and it seemed like everyone was in a hurry to get someplace.

General aviation pilots were also in a hurry, judging by the number of covers featuring light twins and retractable gear aircraft. FLYING began the year with a pilot report about the Bellanca 260, one of the first socalled “family-friendly airplanes.”

More retractable-gear airplanes appeared on the market and in the pages of FLYING. A multi-page spread introduced the Cessna Centurion, also known as the Cessna 210.

Aviation was becoming more technologically advanced as more ads appeared for aviation radios and avionics. The days of flying just with “altimeter needle, ball, and airspeed” were coming to an end.

FLYING branched out, writing for a more eclectic audience, to include stories about the air war in Vietnam and women in aviation. The publication recognized June as Discover Flying Month because it determined that many people would receive Discovery Flights as Father’s Day or graduation presents, and these would often lead to flying lessons. The airlines were hiring, and advertisements for flight schools and headsets for civilians became more prevalent.

In 1968, FLYING added two columnists to its staff, Richard Collins, who would become editor-in-chief in 1977, and Peter Garrison, who still contributes to the publication today.

The 1970s: Bax, Gas Shortages, and Airline Deregulation

Gordon Baxter, an aviator, radio personality, and humor writer from Texas, joined FLYING as a columnist. His shortest column appeared in 1973:

“Naked City Airport, Indiana. Turf strip overrun with parked cars of a crowd of 7,000 who came to view 50 naked girls vying for title of Miss Nude America, and four naked parachute jumpers. Unable to obtain other data, notebook was with my clothes.”

A fuel shortage marked the decade, and cars lined up for blocks at gas stations. The lack of available fuel—and the cost—got the attention of the aviation world.

FLYING featured covers with photos of GA and business aircraft. The only military covers during this decade were of the Canadian Snowbirds and vintage WWII-era designs, such as the deHavilland Spitfire and Fairey Firefly, Grumman Wildcat, and Vought Corsair. The Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 threw the airline industry into turmoil as it relieved the federal government of control over routes and fares. This resulted in new airlines, more flights, and more passengers. The pages of FLYING carried advertisements for programs for type ratings and accelerated ground schools. The airline world needed pilots, as those trained during WWII approached the mandatory retirement age of 60.

In 1971, cigarette advertising was banned on TV so the tobacco industry shifted to print—including FLYING. In 1975, the David Clark Company introduced the first noise-attenuating headset to address pilot hearing loss, now recognized as an occupational hazard.

FLYING featured several articles about finding a good, used airplane and aircraft restoration services.

Writer John W. Olcott noted that six out of 10 students dropped out because training was not enjoyable: “It’s going to hurt everyone from the airlines to airframe manufacturers if we don’t fix it.”

In 1977, FLYING celebrated its 50th anniversary.

The 1980s: Space-Age Designs, GPS Debuts

The new decade began with a Long EZ on the cover. The aircraft, one of many space-age designs conceived by Burt Rutan, would prove to be very popular.

In 1986, Rutan’s twin-boom design, piloted by his brother, Dick Rutan, and pilot Jeana Yeager made the first nonstop, unrefueled flight around the world.

NASA’s space shuttle, America’s first reusable aircraft, became synonymous with the decade. Accomplished pilot J. Mac McClellan joined FLYING magazine and stayed for 35 years, serving for 20 years as editor-in-chief.

FLYING published its first guide for aircraft buyers. Fast airplanes are now what the public wants. The flying community recognized the V-tail Bonanza as the fastest single-engine piston.

In 1984, Ziff-Davis sold the magazine to Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., then one of the world’s largest magazine publishers.

Civilians learned about a new form of navigation called the global positioning system (GPS). GPS approaches were introduced, and the children of the magenta line were born.

The 1990s: Women Military Pilots, Computerized Cockpits

With aviation still soaring high, the magazine featured stories about the first women to fill combat aviation roles in the U.S. military. The Navy, in particular, saw an increase in flight school applicants, thanks in part to the 1986 movie Top Gun, which boosted recruitment by 300 percent.

Aviation careers were still booming. Technical colleges ran ads showing off their courses in aircraft and avionics maintenance, air traffic control, and flying.

In the summer of 1995, FLYING marked the 50th anniversary of World War II. Contributing editor Russell Munson debuted in the issue with the P-51 Mustang on the cover.

The Cirrus SR20 appeared and set the aviation world alight with both the built-in airframe parachute and the Avidyne glass cockpit.

The concept of “fly by wire” and automation became more common.

The 2000s: 9/11, Glass, and LSAs

Aviation—like the rest of the world—wondered what Y2K would do to the computerized air traffic control system, and when the new century began with no major upsets, the world breathed a sigh of relief.

All of this changed on September 11, 2001, when airliners were used as weapons. The commercial aviation industry took a nosedive, and many people were afraid to fly. Congress created the Transportation Security Administration and airline travelers started taking off their shoes and leaving liquids outside a defined security zone.

People don’t particularly want to be packed into airliners when they have options such as fractionals and charters. The covers of FLYING reflected this, showing mostly business jets.

FLYING continued to educate up-and-coming pilots with articles on the basics, such as how to perform good takeoffs and landings, and techniques for instrument operations, such as flying a good nonprecision approach.

Email, in its infancy in the 1990s, clearly made it easier to send comments to the magazine.

In December 2003, pilots and aviation enthusiasts celebrated the 100th anniversary of aviation with an attempt to recreate the historic flight on December 17 at Kill Devil Hills with a replica aircraft. However, the weather didn’t cooperate, with heavy winds and rain.

In July 2004, the FAA adopted the sport pilot rule. Very similar to a European ultralight certificate, the rule was ostensibly designed to make flying more affordable. In addition, pilots flying under the rule can do so with a driver’s license, in lieu of a medical certificate. Several aircraft manufacturers—among them Piper, Cirrus, and Cessna—developed and marketed light sport aircraft. Sport piloting appeared to stall in
2007, and FLYING columnist Richard Collins noted that the flood of aviation predicted by the sport pilot rule “hasn’t happened yet.”

Cub-inspired designs from CubCrafters and Legend Cub metaphorically duke it out at air shows. In June 2005, FLYING columnist Gordon Baxter passed away. We published his last column in September of that year.

The FAA raised the mandatory retirement age for airline pilots from 60 to 65, and the duration of a third-class medical, for those under age 40 at the time of examination, increased from 36 to 60 calendar months.

In 2008, a recession hit, and furloughs ravaged the aviation world. Everyone from airlines to flight schools, aircraft manufacturers, and aviation publications felt the bite, as once-healthy aircraft order books fell off in the wake of the economic crunch.

FLYING columnist and editor J. Mac McClellan told readers about something new to improve aircraft safety called ADS-B. It would take the industry more than a decade—and a mandate from the FAA—to compel aircraft owners and operators to install the lifesaving equipment into GA aircraft across the spectrum.

In June 2009, FLYING was sold to Bonnier Corp., the U.S. magazine division of the family-owned Bonnier Group of Sweden. The acquisition placed the magazine in a portfolio aimed at active enthusiasts of a wide range of activities that pilots might also be drawn to.

The 2010s: Pilot Shortage and Training Boom

As the new century turned the corner on a new decade, aircraft manufacturers, many of whom were forced to layoff staff and cut back production, expressed optimism that they would recover—eventually.

The airlines were in a hiring frenzy. The pilot shortage was very real and began at the flight school level, because when CFIs reached 1,000 hours total time, they were off to the regional airlines. There was more talk about ADS-B as a means for making flying safer— but there was also some pushback from aircraft owners, who balked at the installation cost, which ran north of $2,000.

FLYING supported the promotion of learning to fly with special issues. A slew of entry-level aircraft debuted under the light sport category, with the Icon A5, and models from Pipistrel, Flight Design, and Tecnam.

The FAA introduced the remote pilot certificate in 2016. There were growing pains, though, as actively
piloted aircraft and small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS) learned to share the sky.

The 2020s: …And Here We Are

The COVID-19 pandemic and climate change were the buzz phrases as FLYING entered the new decade. The death toll from the virus has been like nothing seen in several generations.

Airliners were parked for more than a year; thousands of people were furloughed. CFIs who barely made enough to survive were wondering if they should risk their health and the health of their families to build hours for a job that may not be there in a few short months.

A vaccine was developed and slowly the world—and aviation—emerged from the global timeout. The airlines added back flights, and flight schools ramped up.

General aviation has proven resilient through the crisis, with business aviation taking on some of the activity lost by the airlines. People who discovered flying during the pandemic now find they don’t want to return to crowded hub airports and security lines.

In 2021, Bonnier sold FLYING to digital media entrepreneur Craig Fuller, and the new FLYING was born.

The post Aviation History Through the Pages of <i>FLYING</i> appeared first on FLYING Magazine.